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TO VENICE AND BACK 

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Jtt an lour. 


t. \v. EELE. 

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PARTS OF WHICH WERE READ AT 


THE CUCKFIELD READING ROOM, 


FEBRUARY 11, 1860. 



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LONDON: 

J. CHISMAN, PRINTER, ALBANY STREET, 
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TO 


ELIHU BURR ITT, 


BY HIS Oil) FKIENI) 
■i ' 


THE AUTHOR 




“ TO VENICE AND BACK IN AN HOUR.” 


I am not going to give you a lecture this 
evening. Not a bit of it! You have already 
had during this season a sufficient quantity of 
tough food for your minds to debilitate the 
stoutest intellectual digestion. Hvdrostatics 
was rather a stiff business, and the subject of 
coins, though mollified for you as much as 
could be, was after all a grim sort of customer 
to tackle. So by way of as complete a change 
as possible, I propose to take you to Venice 
and back in an hour, killing the journey with 
nothing but gossiping extracts, taken just as 
they stand, from a couple of journals and a 


B 



collection of old letters from Italy. Any 
additional matter will be attired in the most 
undignified language which occurs to me, and 
if I become occasionally trifling, not to say silly, 
that will merely be fulfilling my deliberate 
intention. You have been patient listeners, so 
to speak, on several occasions at the Polytechnic, 
let us now have an evening together at the 
Adelplii. So you need not shrink with any 
apprehension of history or statistics. There are 
at least a score of books in this room which 
will abundantly supply all such particulars to 
any of you who have a taste that way. I shall 
only tell you a little about some of the places 
you have heard so much of lately, for were 
one to attempt to enumerate a tithe of the 
objects of interest which u engage the attention 
of the curious traveller,” as the guidebooks say, 
in such a country as North Italy, the descrip- 


3 


tion would run on for ever like the legendary 
“ cork leg.’' u A curious traveller,” by tlie way, 
is always suggestive to my mind (which obsti¬ 
nately persists in taking the whimsical view of 
everything which may be susceptible of being 
regarded in any such light) of the Wandering 
Jew, or a crab whose course of progression is a 
diagonal sidle, or of the earlier types of loco¬ 
motive steam engines. It will be explained to 
you why the battle of Solferino was fought on 
that particular spot, and wdiy its issue was such 
as you know it to have been. Beyond this, I 
shall speak as little as possible of the late war 
and its attendant horrors, for to one who has 
lately seen something of them in the shape of 
an apparently endless multitude of maimed and 
tortured wretches, these are not by any means 
refreshing subjects to dwell upon. 

It will be proper to begin by telling you 

b 2 


4 


what are the shortest ways of getting from 
London or Paris to Turin. One route is via 
Marseilles, and thence by sea to Genoa; a 
second is by Chambery and over the Mont 
Cenis, which was the road by which the bulk 
of the French army poured into Sardinia last 
spring; and a third is by Lyons, Grenoble, 
and Briangon, over the Mont Genevre to Susa. 
(Routes shown on the map). This last road 
is the shortest of the three, and beyond all 
comparison the most picturesque and beautiful, 
but the portion of it between Grenoble and 
Brian^on, though begun by the first Napoleon, 
is still incomplete. 

Some years ago I happened to be at 
Grenoble* with an English family of my 


* The Convent of the Grande Chartreuse, as everybody 
knows, is near Grenoble, and “ the thing to do ” is to go and 
stay there for a night, and be called up to see the monks at 
midnight mass. An Englishman of abject vulgarity, but deli- 


0 


acquaintance who had set their hearts upon 
taking this direct route to Brian^on, hut our 
innkeeper informed them that their heavy 
carriage of Long Acre manufacture could not 
he dragged thither through the hogs and other 
difficulties which it would have to encounter, by 
less than eight horses. Thereupon they dis¬ 
patched me to the residence of the principal 
posting master of Grenoble, who lived on the 
outskirts of the town, to bargain for the neces¬ 
sary amount of horse power. Monsieur was up¬ 
stairs over the stable in bed, his leg having been 
broken by a kick from one of his own posters. 
He declined to undertake the journey with less 
than sixteen horses. No doubt the thrilling 


ciously comic in his manifestations of the excess of the quality, 
politely invited himself to supper with me at Grenoble, and 
described his impressions of the midnight scene at the chapel 
in question in the following terms. “ I ’eard the old beggars 
howlin’ away, and kickin’ up such a dismal row. Jest sor em 
at it, and then turned into bed agin.” 


effect of my eloquence upon him must have 
been in some degree weakened by the circum¬ 
stance that it had to be aimed at him through 
the keyhole, as he would not unlock the door, 
and of course the beauty of the graceful and 
impressive action with which the delivery of 
the address was accompanied, was wholly lost to 
him through the same circumstance. And on 
my returning an hour afterwards with a reply 
from the owner of the carriage that the sixteen 
horses were to be got ready, he then said that 
the team, or a part of them, might indeed 
perchance reach Briancon, the wheelers with 
the shafts, or some fractional portions thereof, 
still adhering to them, but that no earthly 
vehicle, unless specially built for the purpose, 
could possibly live through the first stage; and 
in short that he would not undertake the enter¬ 
prise on any terms. So I went by myself, the 


only passenger in an institution on wheels, 
constructed for this particular service. It was 
before the subsidence of those destructive inun¬ 
dations at Lyons which you must remember read¬ 
ing of some years ago. The few bridges which 
remained about that part of France were left 
in a very paralytic and debilitated condition, 
and the roads were nowhere particular. We 
started at dusk, and a violent storm of thunder 
and lightning, accompanied with drowning 
floods of rain, raged the whole night. We 
were continually obliged to get out and walk 
ahead of our vehicle while it passed some point 
where it seemed more particularly likely than 
elsewhere that it might plop into the water and 
get playfully whisked away by the torrent into 
the Mediterranean. And occasionally the driver 
called upon me to hold the horses while he 
moved the larger stones out of the way, every 


8 


tiling smaller than an ordinary bandbox being 
disregarded by him. 

It may be remarked in passing, that few 
weapons are more handy to fight the smaller 
battles of life with than a collection of silly 
old songs known by heart. If it be not a 
particularly dignified employment under agi¬ 
tating circumstances of any kind to be occupied 
with thinking what queer old jingle is most 
applicable to one’s position for the time being, 
it is at any rate better than biting through one’s 
under lip, which with some peoqde is the only 
other alternative. The observation is suggested 
to me by the accidental recollection that during 
the night 1 am describing, on having to hold the 
horses at a point when the chances seemed 
unpleasantly in favour of our all being washed 
away together, the only thing which disturbed 
my equanimity was the circumstance that 


9 


nothing hut convivial ditties, and one in parti¬ 
cular about drinking champagne on Indian 
ground, or something of that description, would 
keep coming into my head. For by no effort 
of ingenuity could these be considered as other¬ 
wise than eminently inapplicable to the existing 
state of things. At last it happily bethought 
me of “ The Derby ram ” and that 


“ The boy who held the dish, Sir, 

Was carried away in the flood.” 

The felicitous aptness of this passage preserved 
me in a state of radiant and genial gratification, 
until the next serious contretemps which 
occurred demanded a fresh antidote of the same 
description. 

The circumstance of our actually reaching 
Brian^on, after accomplishing the journey of 
fifty-four miles in exactly seventeen hours and 


10 


three quarters, was the more gratifying from its 
having been wholly unanticipated. We must 
not linger too long on the northern side of the 
Alps. BrianQon however is so singular a place 
that a hasty sketch of it may he properly 
introduced. Imagine a town about the size of 
Cuckfield, built on the slant of a steep hill, and 
shut in on all sides with an irregular fence of 
bare and rugged mountains. The effect of being 
for ever immersed, so to speak, in mountains, 
as is the case at Brian^on, is dispiriting and 
oppressive to the last degree. Only a compara¬ 
tively small piece of sky can be seen, and the 
morning and evening rays of the sun are 
utterly blocked out. Plato in his Pluedo ven¬ 
tilates some extravagantly absurd theory about 
our being all down at the bottom of a well. 
An approximation to the reality of such a 
position may be found at Briancon. Perhaps 


11 


it never struck you till this moment what an 
advantage we enjoy in the situation of Cuckfield, 
through which we command such a fine spread 
of sky, together with opportunities for contem¬ 
plating meteoric and atmospheric effects of all 
kinds on the grandest scale. We have magnifi¬ 
cent Claudes and Turners in the morning, glo¬ 
rious prismatic Cuyps at midday, and rich and 
glowing Danbys at sunset, presented with a 
completeness of effect which is hardly known 
elsewhere. 

The lower declivities of these Briangon Alps 
are all glare and flame with the tropical sun of 
that district, while their harsh and jagged peaks, 
inlaid with glistening streaks of perpetual snow* 
in their rifts, stand cut out in clear and sharp 
relief against the deep ultramarine blue of the 
sky of southern France. On the ledges of the 
ascents more immediately adjacent to the town 


are perched a series of strongholds one above 
the other, fort upon fort, and battery upon 
battery, rising en echelon to so great a height, 
that when you apply to the Commandant of the 
garrison for leave to visit the works, it is not 
improbable that with the usual courtesy of 
Frenchmen he will warn you that the day’s 
labour which it would cost you to toil up to the 
topmost posts would not be compensated by the 
view to be obtained therefrom. Any hostile 
force which should attempt to make its way 
through such of the defiles about Briangon as 
are within reach of its guns, would need, as you 
may suppose, some stouter defence than even 
a Mrs. Gamp umbrella to protect itself from 
the iron shower which would be plunged upon 
it from above. It is fortunate for us that the 
fortification of Cuckfield is not likely to form a 
part of the system of national defences, since 


13 


residence in a walled town is occasionally most 
inconvenient. If a person who happens to live 
at the lower edge of Briangon wishes to take a 
five minutes' stroll into the fields, he must 
make his exit for that purpose by a gate which 
is at the very top of the town. On the way to 
this he has to struggle up a steep hill bristling 
with a pavement of sharp stones of such 
exceeding and intense angularity, that the 
ancient ordeal of walking over hot ploughshares 
must have been simply a luxurious refreshment 
to tender toes as compared with the agonies to 
which he will be subjected in the prosecution of 
his enterprise. An entry occurs in my journal 
dated Briangon, Hotel de la Poste, which may 
be useful as a warning to any of you who may 
travel that way. It is as follows. “ This Inn 
possesses an interest of its own in having 
achieved a triumph of filthiness which even 


14 


German establishments, notwithstanding the 
proficiency of that people in turning themselves 
into swine, cannot hope to rival. Every plate 
is embellished along its edge with a series of 
representations in has relief of the waiter’s 
thumb, and he would be indeed a man of a 
bold and adventurous temperament who should 
venture into abed here.” The Hotel de l’ours, a 
queer little place not mentioned by Murray, in 
a back street which didn’t seem to have any 
particular name to speak of, seemed much 
better. I am no gourmand, and therefore have 
not the odious habit to which too many travellers 
who ought to know better, are addicted, of 
chronicling bills of fare, unless it be for the 
sake of any comical features which they may 
happen to possess. So the BrianQon commis¬ 
sariat must have struck me as funny, since my 
journal contains the following entry. u What 


15 


a request for a ‘ petit diner ’ at the Hotel de la 
Poste at Briamjon produced. ‘ Soupe,’ consist- 
ting of water diluted with something even 
weaker than itself, and in which a poultice 
appeared to have met a watery grave. French 
beans of the size of young cucumbers. Pommes 
d’amour, vegetable productions so red and 
wrinkled as to be vividly suggestive of washer¬ 
women’s thumbs. Trout of much the same 
dimensions as those used for counters at whist. 
A cube of beef, of the size of a die, and about 
as hard. Two chickens, not quite as large as 
sparrows, one roast and the other boiled. 
Compote of wild gooseberries from the adjoining 
mountains. Wine of puritanical-old-maid acid¬ 
ity. ‘ Voila tout M’sieu.’ ” 

The walk from Brian^on over the Mont 
Genevre through woods full of deliciously sweet 
lavender and moss, and wild gooseberries no 


16 


bigger than peas, but exceedingly nice in their 
way, and thence onwards for a dozen miles or 
so towards Susa, through such scenery as 
Beverley never dreamt of, and all this in the 
society of a companion whom to know is indeed 
to admire and love, was—well I mustn’t go on 
about that. 

If you adopt the other of the overland routes 
to Susa which I mentioned, namely that via 
Chambery, you will get by railway as far as a 
place called St. Jean de Maurienne (here on 
the map) where you must disembark into a 
diligence. Many of you, no doubt, have never 
seen a diligence, so this picture of the article 
will interest you. The railway is eventually to 
be carried through the Alps by a tunnel eight 
miles long. Some weeks ago however the chief 
Sardinian engineer, Monsieur Melly, to whom 
the conduct of the work was confided, was 


17 


drowned in a flood. It will no doubt eventually 
be accomplished, but the difficulties which have 
to be encountered, as detailed to me by Madame 
Melly, are more serious than is generally sup¬ 
posed. The mention of Madame Melly, one of 
the pleasantest travelling companions whom it 
has ever been my good fortune to be thrown 
with, reminds me that if you wish to polish up 
your recollection of any foreign language which 
you may not have used for some time, the best 
plan is to talk it resolutely, whether you can or 
not, to somebody who can speak nothing else. 
Madame’s whole stock of English consisted 
only of u ow dee doo ” pronounced in the most 
comical manner that ever was heard; it would 
have tickled Miss Miggs into a smile. But it 
was with difficulty that she could be persuaded 
to repeat it for my entertainment, having till 
then fostered the conviction that it was a 


c 


18 


naughty oath, or at any rate some expression of 
a profligate and reprehensible character. The 
difficulty which attends the first resumption of 
an unaccustomed language probably arises in a 
great measure from one’s having lost the habit 
of thinking in it. If this be so, it would seem 
to form a corroborative illustration of the fact 
stated by Dr. Roget (whose name cannot be 
quoted by me without at least some expression 
of admiration and respect) in the preface to his 
Thesaurus, that thought and expression are 
pretty nearly convertible terms. For obvious 
reasons, hardly one person in a thousand will be 
prepared to admit that people who cannot write 
and speak with imagination, force, and clear¬ 
ness, are correspondingly barren, weak, and 
confused, in thought. But it is most un¬ 
questionably true, for all that! 

* 

The Mont Cenis, from the facilities which 


19 


the particular conformation of its surface 
happens to afford to the mountain blasts to 
sweep unchecked, and of which they avail 
themselves with a very unpleasant alacrity, is 
notoriously the coldest of all Alpine passes, and 
if crossed at midnight in September it will be 
found decidedly “ fresh.” One is apt to get 
alternately baked and frozen in travelling, after 
the fashion in which Milton in Paradise Lost 
describes the bad angels as having been 
bothered. Do not impute to me disrespect, or 
even levity, in speaking in such a tone as this 
of the finest epic in the English language. Its 
beauty is sullied by unworthy passages such as 
the one referred to, and most of all by the 
description of the invention of artillery, which 
I forbear to characterise by the only terms 
which could properly be applied to it. Read 

and judge for yourselves if it is not so. But to 

o 2 


20 


return to the Mont Cenis. The diligences, for 
four started together, crawled slowly up the 
ascent, each of them drawn by two horses and 
eight mules, while the air resounded with the 
drivers’ exhortations to their cattle of “ Hue! 
Brrrrr-i-gand! zaccccr-e nom de Dieu! ” and 
other expletives of which the French fraternity 
of the whip and spur are wont to avail them¬ 
selves as safety valves for letting off the surplus 
steam of their energies in moments of difficulty 
or excitement. And the rattling volleys of 
cracks which they so assiduously sustain with 
their whips under such circumstances, suggested 
what the explosion of a firework manufactory 
must be when it comes to the cracker depart¬ 
ment’s turn to go off. Meanwhile your humble 
servant in the “ banquette ” was frozen stiff 
and stark, although enveloped in three coats, 
two shirts, two neckcloths, two pair of—well— 


I spare you further detail, and will simply 
remark that my general condition was that of 
being swathed like an Egyptian mummy, or 
immersed in clothing like a Dutch heiress on 
becoming a bride. In Holland it is, or was, 
the custom for a bride’s dowry to be invested in 
petticoats, and that she should stagger to the 
altar banked up in the whole collection. The in¬ 
troduction of crinoline must, one would suppose, 
have occasioned some modification with respect 
to wearing the entire wardrobe at once, since 
the result would be, in the present fashion of 
female attire, portentous. A Dutch bride 
indeed would be even as Primrose Hill. “ In- 
star montis,” like the Trojan horse. The practice 
is a commendable one, since the husband is for 
obvious reasons effectually precluded by it from 
converting his wife’s fortune to his own pur¬ 
poses, and marriage settlements are thus 


22 


rendered unnecessary. Well, it was much too 
cold to sit still, so I got down and performed a 
sort of fandango all the way up the ascent 

alongside the dil, in the vain endeavour to 

% 

dance a little warmth into my body. It was a 
very animated and graceful little performance 
no doubt, hut fulfilled its intended object only 
indifferently, for notwithstanding the vigour of 
my gymnastics, I remained as cold as a slug, 
and continued frozen up as hard and stiff as if 
I had been a statue of myself done in stone, 
until arriving at Turin. 

The heat of Turin in summer would cook a 
salamander, or to adopt the most forcible 
illustration which occurs to me, although it is 

of a figurative character, would melt the heart of 
an overseer. Astronomers tell us that in some 
planets, as for example, Mercury, which are 
very near the sun, iron, if it be found there at 


23 


all, must be always in the form of a red-hot 
liquid. There are similar grounds for suppos¬ 
ing that during the summer months at Turin 
butter and lollipops cannot exist otherwise than 
in the shape of fish sauce and syrup respect¬ 
ively. And a very fat person who should visit 
Turin during the great heats might reasonably 
apprehend getting subjected to a material 
change in his personal identity by being meta¬ 
morphosed into a stream like Acis, or subsiding 
into the heels of his boots and elapsing there¬ 
out as a soup, or evaporating in the form of an 
unctuous mist. Yet Turin is a pleasant place 
at all times. It is very clean, and cheerful, and 
well-paved, and you may walk throughout it 
under arcades. In all the streets, too, which 
run north and south you have a refreshing 
view at one end of snowy mountains, and 
at the other of undulating heights clothed 


24 


with handsome timber and sparkling with 
villas. Candour won’t let me give the Po a 
good word. It is green and stagnant, and 
otherwise unprepossessing in appearance. Upon 
closer investigation, too, it would probably be 
detected as sharing with Father Thames his 
characteristic foible, that of an objectionable 
smelliness. This view (a picture) of Turin is 
exceedingly accurate and effective. 

The railway from Turin to Milan passes 
through Novara (shown on the map) where, 
as you will remember, Charles Albert and his 
Sardinians were defeated in 1849 by the 
Austrians under Radetzky. It soon afterwards 
crosses the Ticino, which divides Lombardy 
from Piedmont. The first station on the east 
of the Ticino is Magenta. You cannot have 
forgotten the account of the battle which took 
place there, so it is unnecessary for me to repeat 


25 


its details. At the time of my visit many 
traces remained of the encounter. The rail¬ 
way bridge still lay in the stream, and the 
wooden structure which had been temporarily 
substituted for it betrayed such symptoms of 
paralytic infirmity when trains passed over it, 
as were not reassuring to the passengers. A 
house also might be observed which had so 
many dents and holes in its front that it 
looked like a magnified nutmeg grater, or as 
if it had been suffering from an attack of 
small pox, or labouring under that most for¬ 
midable of all depressing maladies, the Court 
of Chancery. There were also some mounds 
surmounted by rude crosses, marking the pits 
to which the slain of both sides had been con¬ 
signed. A dog of African breed which had 
belonged to General Espinasse, lurked for 
many weeks about the spot where his master 


26 


was killed, and though often taken away to 
some distance, constantly returned. Travellers 
passing through Magenta are, as of course 
they will be for years to come, beset by a legion 
of ragamuffins old and young, offering verit¬ 
able bullets from the field of battle for sale. 
There cannot be a single water pipe left within 
a dozen miles of Magenta, since the run upon 
lead to supply the material for the manufacture 
of these relics must have been so active and 
exhaustive. 

From Magenta an hour or two brings you to 
Milan, which, like the rest of Sardinia at the 
time of my last visit, was all flags and exulta¬ 
tion. This (picture) is a very good view of 
Milan. Its famed Cathedral forms, as you 
observe, the most prominent feature of the city. 
It would be very easy to go off into a sort 
of paroxysm of architectural ecstacy about this 


27 


cathedral, and startle you with an account of 
the number of statues it has, and how it is 
built of white marble, and I don’t know what 
all; and the views of it would seem to account 
for any fervour of eloquence on the subject. 
But with all the deep appreciation with which I 
am gifted for the glories of architecture, and 
which is indeed a blessing to be thankful for, 
since it forms a source of unfailingenjoyment of 
the highest kind, yet it must be confessed that 
Milan cathedral does not, at least externally, 
impress me much. The general squatness of 
its form, and the multiplicity of pinnacles, com¬ 
municate, be it spoken with all proper respect, 
something porcupiny, not to say hedgehogy, to 
its general effect. The great Western facade is 

a mere uncomfortable jumble of every style of 

* 

architecture from impure Gothic to pure Brixton, 
reminding one of the tableaux which are dis- 


28 


played over travelling penny shows, painted in 
square compartments, each compartment exhi¬ 
biting some misbegotten enormity or other. 
And lastly, the marble of which it is constructed 
was once upon a time, no doubt, white, but the 
same thing is true, in a highly conventional 
sense at least, of a postboy’s hat. The last- 
named article indeed, when spattered with 
yellow slush from some of our clayey lanes 
down in these parts, and weatherstained all 
sorts of colours, would convey a very fair idea 
to you of the hue of the marble of Milan 
Cathedral. The inside of the Church, of which 
this is a view, is veiy imposing from its vast 
and unincumbered space, its solemn grandeur, 
and the brilliancy of its stained glass. 
Public worship at Milan Cathedral is conducted 
with more simplicity than is usually the case in 
Roman Catholic temples of such magnificence. 


29 


What is called the “ Ambrosianus cantus,” or, 
the form of musical service introduced by St. 
Ambrose, is adopted. St. Ambrose was Bishop 
of Milan in the fourth century. He was at 
first a heathen, and a lawyer, and held some 
office in the government of the province, 
analogous to that of the Attorney General in 
this country. Eight days after his baptism he 
was consecrated bishop of Milan. Sir R. 
Bethell preached such a good sermon the other 
day at Wolverhampton on Christian charity, 
that one is led to suppose that the practice of 
exchanging the silk gown for lawn sleeves 
might still be occasionally resorted to with 
advantage to the community. Sunday is obser¬ 
ved as strictly at Milan as the sternest of 
dyspeptic Sabbatarians could require. 

The railway from Milan to Venice passes 
through Bergamo and Brescia, both of them 


30 


splendid towns, and each containing objects of 

great interest which time does not allow me to 

particularise here. It terminates for the present 

at Desenzano (here) on the Lake of Guarda, 

the portion of the line between that place and 

Peschiera having been broken up during the 

late war. Solferino is about five miles from 

Desenzano, and its famous tower is a prominent 

object of the country south of the railway. 

Most of the views of the various scenes at the 

seat of war which appeared in the periodicals 

last Spring were singularly true to the reality. 

The descriptions of towns were in some cases, 

as of course was to be expected, incorrect in 

details. For example, Turin, Susa, and Milan, 

« 

were each of them frequently described as 
strongly fortified. Now there is not a single 
gun at any one of those places, nor any defensive 
works whatever. The war maps have now lost 


31 


their interest. Still, it may be worth while to 
mention, in case any of yon should be medi¬ 
tating a tour in North Italy, that for general 
purposes you cannot have better or cheaper 
maps of the country than those which were 
published as supplements to The Dispatch 
newspaper, the paper and supplement together 
costing fourpence. 

It would be too lengthy a task to describe to 
you the course and various battles of the late 
campaign, even if it could be supposed that the 
newspapers had not already supplied yon with 
sufficiently detailed accounts of every thing that 
took place. Besides which, the terms of our 
programme restrict me to scraps picked out of 
journals, and old letters written from the scenes 
referred to, and among these, of course, long 
extracts from The Times describing the various 
actions, could not possibly have place. But 


32 


since the interest of the bloody drama which 
was so recently played on the Italian stage 
culminates at the Solferino scene, I may endea¬ 
vour to give some few additional touches of 
reality to the picture of the spot which you 
must each of you have formed in your 
own minds, by describing its more promi¬ 
nent features as they caught my observa¬ 
tion. The Austrians, as you know, had been 
defeated in all the preceding battles of the 
campaign, and retreated, occasionally fighting, . 
but never making a resolute stand with their 
whole force, till they reached Solferino. And 
the reason they selected a position there for 
their final effort was this. This Alpine barrier 
(shown on the map) which forms the boundary 
of Lombardy on the north, encroaches, as you see 
more and more, as it runs eastward from Como, 
upon the plain, until, as will be explained to 


33 


you more fully presently when we come to 
speak of the position of the four fortresses, an 
army advancing upon Venetia from the west 
would have, on reaching the vicinity of Solfe- 
rino, to move almost immediately under the 
southern slopes of these mountains. Just at this 
point, a short succession of spurs, or roots, as 
they might more properly he called, of these 
Northern Alps, run due southwards, and 
after rising and falling irregularly, like great 
green waves in a chopping sea, eventually sink 
into the plain. Nearly at the southern ex¬ 
tremity of the longest of these spurs, and on 
its topmost eminence, stands the village of 
Solferino with its conspicuous tower. The 
Austrians occupied the whole ridge, their right 
extending as far as the lake of Guarda. The 
village of Solferino, as being the highest point, 

and commanding the lesser elevations adjacent 

B 


34 


to it, was of course the key of their position. 
The Allied camp was on the next parallel 
series of heights to the westward. The first 
shock of the battle took place in the valley 
between the two lines, and the fiercest and most 
obstinate struggle was of course for the posses¬ 
sion of the village of Solferino, upon which the 
issue of the battle depended. You know the 
result. Owing to a misfortune, the only serious 
contretemps which has occurred to me for many 
years in travelling, and which was entirely the 
work of those never-sufficiently-to-be-anathe¬ 
matised Austrian officials, I was hurried on my 
journey without having had time enough to 
get quite up to the tower of Solferino. But I 
walked over a great part of the field of battle, 
and the rest of it was easy enough to be seen. 
It was difficult to imagine that so tranquil a 
spot had lately been the cockpit of two 


35 


empires. Evertking was peaceful and smiling. 
The farming people were engaged in their 
ordinary avocations just as if nothing had 
happened. The vineyards were alive with 
legions of dragon flies, big, hold, busy, buz- 
zing, fellows, of the size and bulk of hum¬ 
ming birds, who whizzed by me like squibs, 
while every bank was peopled with lizards of 
three different hues, who darted about with the 
rapidity of momentary flashes of colour. It 
would sound odd to pass abruptly from the 
battle of Solferino into an episode of natural 
history, although the subject of lizards is a 
favorite one with me, after conducting the 
education of specimens of three or four genera 
of the tribe with much interest and success, 
but if any of you possess a vivarium, it will 
give me great pleasure to tell you at any time what 
treasures may be obtained for it from Solferino. 

T) 2 


36 


I liad reason to apprehend that my hones 
also might he left to whiten on the field of 
Solferino, for while walking about there, a 
prodigious mastiff with great glaring eyes as 
big as the gooseberries called “ Brompton prize- 
takers,” a gaping mouth, as frothy as if he had 
sprung up from the consumption of a soufflee 
to finish his dinner on me, and a throat red 
and awful like the passage to purgatory, made 
hostile demonstrations, and came and walked 
close behind me, growling in a fashion which 
kept me in a state of palpitating agitation on 
reflecting how extremely thin my trousers were, 
and that if any deplorable impulse should seize 
him to make a meal of animal sustenance off 
my person, I had no means of gainsaying him. 

After returning from Solferino to Desenzano, 
a drive of eight miles brings you to Peschiera. 
It was expected of course by the Austrians 


37 


that Louis Napoleon would he after taking 
French leave of “ adopting ” Peschiera, and 
therefore every thing along this road, which 
would have been his line of approach to it, was 
put in applepie order to give him a warm recep¬ 
tion. The nature of these preparations had an 
additional interest for me, as giving suggestions, 
which may possibly prove handy some day, as 
to the best mode of doctoring our Sussex roads 
under a corresponding state of circumstances. 
In the first place all trees, shrubs, and other 
objects in or near the line of advance of the 
enemy, and by which his approach might be in 
any degree masked or protected, were laid low. 
This precaution, it may be added, was also 
taken by the Austrians with respect to the 
whole of the ground lying around their fortresses 
which was within the sweep of the guns from 
the walls, so that almost as many mulberry 


38 


trees as men must liave fallen victims to the 
war. Trenches and mounds were run at right 
angles to the road for some distance in each 
direction, the carriage way itself being block¬ 
aded with what are called 66 gabions,” which 
may be described as short and fat cylinders, 
about three feet high, and eighteen inches in 
diameter, made of hazel twigs, and filled with 
earth; hampers, in short, with no tops or bot¬ 
toms to them. These afford a very tolerable 
protection from musket balls. The immediate 
vicinity of Peschiera presented a curious sight. 
The frontier line dividing the positions which 
were respectively occupied by the contending 
armies at the moment of the abrupt cessation 
of hostilities, and which has since been con¬ 
firmed as the permanent boundary between the 
Austrian and Sardinian territories, passes close 
under the walls of Peschiera, so close indeed 


39 


that the waste of overthrown trees, which, as I 
said, marked the range of the guns of every 
Austrian fortress, extended to a considerable 
distance within the Sardinian limits. At the 
time of my visit the line was dotted out by a 
succession of little huts made of houghs and 
dry reeds, about which a few officers in the 
familiar blue Sardinian uniform were lounging, 
looking rather bored perhaps, but otherwise 
comfortable enough, while at the distance of 
a few yards from them, a large detached fort, 
forming one of the exterior defences of Pes- 
chiera, was crowded with scowling Austrians. A 
field a little way off to the north, whose hedge 
on its western side had just been promoted, 
doubtless to its great surprise, from the simple 
office of curbing the excursive impulses of the 
donkeys turned out to graze there, to the more 
dignified position of forming the boundary 


40 


between a kingdom and an empire, was peopled 
with the bine-legged and wliite-jaeketed myr¬ 
midons of Francis Joseph going through the 
everlasting drill which is their doom, and glit¬ 
tered with flashing steel like the plain where 
Cadmus sowed the dragon’s teeth. 

An Austrian soldier’s existence is one long, 
dreary, unintermitted, never-ending, drill. Any 
one who has ever passed a week at Vienna can 
testify that this is so. The troops display as 
deep a melancholy as is susceptible of expres¬ 
sion by the human countenance, but if there 
are any especial moments when they contrive to 
look more abjectly woebegone than usual, these 
are during chill. Now every one with a spark 
of humanity in his composition must have felt 
sorrow enough at the thoughts of the multitude 
of poor ignorant rustics, knowing nothing 
whatever about anything at all, and devoid of 


41 


any one single idea or interest in life beyond 
cheese and potatoes, who were swept up from 
the wilds of Bohemia and the distant plains of 
Hungary, from u where their rude huts by the 
Danube lay” to be mashed, and hacked, and 
battered, by ferocious Zouaves and bloodthirsty 
Turcos, and have their limbs torn off by the 
latest new infernalities of modern artillery, or 
their bodies run through with those nasty¬ 
looking wavy long knives of the Chasseurs de 
Vincennes, or be starved to death through the 
incapacity of Giulai, Schlick, & Co., and be 
subjected to other grave personal discomforts. 
But in perfect seriousness, one’s horror at these 
things is materially qualified by the considera¬ 
tion that the life of an Austrian private soldier 
is one of such utter joylessness that it can be but 
little loss to him, poor fellow, to be deprived of 
what it is no pleasure to keep. The struggle 


42 


by troops of tliis description, as jaded and 
dejected as Legree’s slaves, against lusty and 
well-equipped, and well-fed, French “ braves,” 
resembled in more points than one a contest 
between a badger and a pugnacious terrier upon 
the question whether the former is to be forcibly 
extracted from his earth. He, jooor fellow, only 
wants to be let alone to mumble his roots, and 
have his naps in quiet, and scratch himself at 
leisure, but if attacked, he curls himself up in 
his earthwork, exhibits a very uninviting cheval 
de frise of sharp teeth, and although overcome 
by the physical superiority of his assailant, dies 
game to the last. His aggressive enemy Mr. 
Pincher is also, on the other hand, no bad type 
of a rough and ready Zouave, always panting 
to “ go at ” something or other, and with an 
inclination, sometimes inconveniently developed 
in practice, of even raising a domestic tumult 


43 


in liis master’s liouse by polishing off the cat 
or otherwise, if no more unexceptionable safety 
valve for his combative impulses is supplied to 
him. 

Pescliiera is one of the famous u Quadri¬ 
lateral ” of fortresses which constitutes the 
military strength of Austrian Lombardy. It 
is not to be supposed that any of you can have 
been so dull and indolent as to have failed to 
inform yourselves of the meaning of a word 
which became so familiar and had so important 
a significance during the war that if you did 
not understand it, you can hardly have read a 
single line of a newspaper all last spring with any 
intelligence. But the main use of a lecture, 
on whatever subject it may be, being, for the 
most part, to put before people more clearly, 
or concisely, or fully, or at any rate a little 
differently, what they knew before, I will give 


44 


here a short summary of what the “ Quadrila¬ 
teral” implies. 

Well then, you will observe by this map 
that at the point where this fortress of for¬ 
tresses, as one might call it, stands, the Lom¬ 
bardo-Venetian territory is narrowest, the Tyro¬ 
lean Alps advancing far into the plain. Their 
southern promontories, indeed, extend to within 
twenty-five miles of the Po, and thus greatly 
circumscribe the ground which is available for 
military operations, and open to the .advance 
of an invading army. To limit an enemy’s 
attack to a particular point is an advantage in 
itself, but still more so when, as in the present 
instance, it offers special obstacles to his pro¬ 
gress, for two important streams here intersect 
the plain between the mountains and the Po. 
The first of these which an invader would have 
to cross is the Mincio. This river issues from 


45 


the lake of Guarda at Peschiera, runs between 
steep banks in a south-easterly direction, and 
is an unfordable and rapid stream for twenty- 
one miles of its course. Diverging at last into 
many brandies from wliose intricacies the city 
of Mantua derives its inaccessibility, it wanders 
amid impracticable marshes till its confluence 
with the river Po. Twenty-five miles to the east¬ 
ward of the Mincio, the second river, the Adige, 
emerging from different Alpine passes, inter¬ 
sects the city of Verona at the immediate base 
of the mountain range, and flows, like the 
Mincio, to the south-east. After a course of 
twenty-five miles, it makes, at the citadel of 
Legnano, a bend more directly towards the 
east, the ground now intervening between it 
and the Po being for some distance a con¬ 
tinuation of the marshy region that generally 
borders the latter river. Thus you will observe 


46 


that this Austrian fortress is of a rhomboidal or 
lozenge-shaped form, averaging twenty-five miles 
to a side, the acute angles being on the north¬ 
west and south-east. The east and west 
boundaries being deep streams, the north side 
is mountainous, while to the south it is an 
impassable swamp. The only bridges over the 
Adige and Mincio are at the angles of the rhom¬ 
boid, and these are commanded by first-class fort¬ 
ifications. Peschiera guards the head of the 
Mincio, while Mantua, at the other extremity 
of the line, is not only rendered impregnable 
to an enemy, but fatal to the unacclimated by 
its position among marshes and its unhealthy 
atmosphere. At the head of the Adige, Verona, 
besides its regular fortifications, has an en¬ 
trenched camp within which fifty thousand 
men might manoeuvre, and being placed at the 
intersection of the Tyrolese and Venetian rail- 


47 


ways, it readily obtains munitions and re¬ 
inforcements at need; while the communi¬ 
cations with Legnano are secured by a road 
running between the Adige and a deep canal 
whereon troops can move as safely as by 
a covered way. A railway also ensures a 
rapid intercourse with Mantua. To attempt, 
then, to force the passage of these streams 
in the presence of the formidable force they 
inclose, protected by citadels which mutually 
support each other, would be hazardous in 
the extreme; since the troops occupying the 
interior can be rapidly and safely concen¬ 
trated on any point menaced. 

People may speculate for ever, for the ques¬ 
tion can never be authoritatively answered, 
whether the Allies, if they had not been 
arrested by the peace of Yillafranca, would 
have made themselves masters of the Quadri- 


48 


lateral. My own opinion is that they would. 
Elaborate estimates may he made of the com¬ 
parative resources of the contending armies, 
hut the paramount consideration seems to he 
the spirit with which they were respectively 
animated. What is a body, however big and 
burly, without a heart ? And the contrast 
between them in this respect was so striking, 
that it could not but be obvious, even to the 
most unmilitary observer, that hardly any 
superiority of numbers however great, or the 
protection of ramparts however formidable, 
would have compensated for the utter discom¬ 
fiture and dismay which prevailed in the 
Austrian army. Not a man of them at the 
time of my visit but showed in his face the 
most abject and spiritless despondency. And 
no wonder. It was of course easy to meet 
with and talk to any number of intelligent 


49 


men, soldiers and civilians, who had seen or 
been engaged in the whole campaign. Solfe- 
rino was described to me by the colonel of the 
tenth regiment of the French line, who was in 
the thick of it all, and also by a Venetian 
employed in the Austrian commissariat depart¬ 
ment, who was a spectator throughout the 
whole struggle. Their accounts, like those of 
all other persons without exception who had 
opportunities of observation, were identically 
the same. The Austrians were beaten at every 
point of warfare. The French rifled guns 
threw shot and shell even into their reserves, 
while their own artillery was incapable of 
replying at half the distance. Then, their 
men were half-starved. The service of the 
Commissariat was so ill-conducted, that on 
several occasions the wretched troops after 
marching, or fighting, or doing both alternately, 

a'* 


E 


50 


during the whole of one of those long, exhaust¬ 
ing, hot, summer days, got nothing at all to eat 
or drink until the following day at noon, and 
then perhaps only coffee. No wonder that under 
such circumstances, faint as they were in heart 
and body, they should have been swept from 
their positions by the whirlwinds of fierce 
Zouaves which rushed upon them. And as if all 
this was not enough, they were so miserably 
handled in battle, through the incapacity of their 
commanding officers, that fatal confusion was a 
common occurrence. The resolution with which 
they stood up, awaiting death almost passively, 
to be knocked down like so many ninepins, was 
worthy of admiration and respect. They could 
not of course but see in their own officers their 
worst enemies. Even three months after 
Solferino, the disorganisation of all public 
arrangements which prevailed still uncorrected 


51 


within the Austrian frontier continued to attest 
the degree of breathless exhaustion to which 
the Government must have been brought. 
Within the Sardinian borders, on the contrary, 
except for the radiancy of people’s countenances, 

all was as if nothing had happened, and wounded 
men were not to be seen. 

In speaking of North Italy, whether strate¬ 
gically or otherwise, constant reference must 
be made to the rivers, since they form so 
prominent a feature of its geography. The 
following ranslation by Addison of some lines 
of a poet named Claudian may help you to 
remember the names of five of the principal 
streams. The translation, by the way, is a 
great improvement on the original. 

“ Venetia’s rivers, summoned all around, 

Hear the loud call and answer to the sound ; 

Her dripping locks the silver Tessin rears, 

The blue transparent Adda next appears ; 

The rapid Adige then erects her head, 

E 2 


52 


And Mincio rising slowly from liis bed ; 

And last Timavus, that with eager force 

From nine wide mouths comes gushing to his course.” 

The Adige is the only great river in Lombardy 
which does not fall into the Po. 

Peschiera, in a military point of view, is 
well enough, no doubt, in its way, but the 
dismalest abyss of ennui which a hapless 
traveller could tumble into. It hardly amounts 
to a town, since it consists only of a few 
houses, with two small inns, and a square of 
barracks, the rest being all fortification. At 
the time of my visit to it, there was no 
regular service of trains to Verona, the 
proceedings of the railway, like all other public 
arrangements at this date, depending on what¬ 
ever orders the military commandant of the dis¬ 
trict might vouchsafe to give from day to day. On 
my arrival there about noon, it appeared there 
was to be no train eastward that day, and 




that the only escape from an entombment 
in Peschiera, in a state of fret and desolation 
for twenty-four hours, was to take a carriage 
to Verona. The distance was only a dozen 
or fourteen miles, which would have been, as 
indeed it proved, a pleasant little stroll enough 
on foot, but an old traveller would no more 
think of parting company with his portman¬ 
teau than he would of going out for a walk 
without his boots. My Italian however having 
become inconveniently rusty, and there seeming 
to be nobody in the place who understood a 
word of anything else, it was difficult to 
conclude a satisfactory bargain for a vehicle. 
In this dilemma it bethought me of the 
Austrian chief of police at the passport office, 
who must of course be able to speak French, 
so I went and soft-sawdered him wholesale, 
and got him to treat for the carriage for me, 


54 


which he accomplished to my entire satis¬ 
faction. Possibly he was tickled with the 
idea of the utter effrontery of anybody’s 
asking an Austrian functionary (the stiffest 
and most conceited cockscombs as is) to do 
such an undignified little job. Perhaps he 
looked upon “ Signor Airly ” as a queer fish 
altogether, because on arriving at the passport 
office earlier in the day, the said Signor vaulted 
out of the carriage without opening the door, 
and entered hat in hand with a pantomimic, 
salaam, quite a choice little bit of u comic 
business ” in its way, and worthy of W. A. 
Barnes, so he took me no doubt for a travelling 
harlequin. He urged me to stay the evening 
at Peschiera, . possibly with the mercenary 
view of getting invited to dinner, for my 
belief is that an Austrian would do any little 
job likely to conduce to his own personal 


advantage, from stealing a spoon, upwards; 
or downwards, if there be any still more 
unbecoming achievement than that. So it 
became necessary to quench his importunities by 
saying, u But, my very dear Sir, if I hang myself 
through ennui, as I undoubtedly shall, in your 
delightful city, about half after nine this 
evening, what good shall your train tomorrow 
do me ?” He felt the cogency of this line of 
argument, and altogether we were so amicable 
that at parting he grasped my hand with a 
fervid gush of cordiality which was quite 
affecting, and perhaps just a little wee bit 
comic also ! 

Verona is an important and magnificent, as 
well as an old, and very interesting, city. Its 
situation at the foot of the Rhoetian Alps, and 
on the banks of the rushing Adige, is remark¬ 
ably fine. It communicates with Austria by 


56 


two lines of railway, namely, that to the Tyrol 
along the Adige, and that to Venice on the 
way to Trieste. Not only has it fortifications of 
enormous strength, but great field works are 
thrown out before the main defences, so that 
it makes one creep to think of the wholesale 
slaughter and manglement which would be 
involved by any attack upon it. It would take 
me a whole evening to describe to you pro¬ 
perly the antique stateliness of the city, 
which impressed me more in that respect than 
any town I ever was in. It is distinguished, 
too, as the birthplace of many celebrated 
men, but in point of interest to English peo¬ 
ple what are all the famous characters who 
ever lived there to those who never lived there ! 
For the action of three at least of Shake¬ 
speare’s plays is laid wholly or in part at 
Verona, and a more poetical scene could not 


57 


have been chosen. There is a sort of dreamy 
old-world magnificence about the place which 
one would suppose ought to be inspiring enough 
to turn even an Austrian chill sergeant into a 
“ bard of Adige.” But if any of you go there, 
you need not feel bound by way of doing the 
“ whole duty of tourists ” to visit the tomb of 
Juliet. For the alleged repository of whatever 
was mortal of that illstarred young lady was 
within the memory of living people a horse- 
trough, which was appropriated to its present 
office of representing her tomb for the pur¬ 
pose of adding an additional lion to the legi¬ 
timate sights of Verona, and thus forming 
the means of transferring a certain number of 
small silver coins from the pockets of credulous 
English travellers to those of the local valets 
de place. The only trace now remaining of the 
Capulets is their badge, a cap, carved in stone 


58 


over the inner entrance to the courtyard of a 
house formerly belonging to them, and which is 
now a diligence office. 

The most striking feature of Verona is its old 
amphitheatre, the finest, excepting only the 
Coliseum, which exists. Those ancients did 
their public entertainments on a grander scale 
than we do, for this amphitheatre is said to 
contain accommodation for sixty thousand peo¬ 
ple, or about a dozen Drury Lane-fulls. An 
opening is made available to me by the mention 
of an amphitheatre for the introduction of some 
amazingly fine and thoughtful moral sentiments 
with which the subject is susceptible of being 
embellished, and which indeed it seems to invite. 
I abstain, for reasons of my own, from favouring 
you with any such reflections at this moment. 
You will recollect also that Childe Harold is 
accessible to you here. In strict adherence to 


59 


the express design of this lecture, we must he 
anything but solemn, or even serious, this 
evening. During the late war, theatres, churches, 
and any other public buildings which afforded 
convenient room for stowage, were adopted with¬ 
out the slightest scruple, as they happened to be 
required, for hospitals, magazines, and other 
military purposes. The principal modern theatre 
at Verona was turned into a store of soldiers’ 
boots. So a small wooden playhouse had been 
constructed in the pit of the old amphitheatre. 
Taking some little interest in dramatic matters, 
I attended a rehearsal there. It was very difficult 
to hear what was said, but there was evidently a 
leading lady in the Vestris line (in the technical 
language of the Italian stage an “ amorosa,”) 
and there was a regular Tilbury-heavy-father. 
There appeared to be two “ walking gentlemen” 
or u amorosi,” who, so far as could be gathered 


60 


from the aspect of their proceedings, were 
engaged in a competitive process of impressing 
upon the heavy father each his own superior 
recommendations as the more eligible candidate 
for the hand of the amorosa his daughter, he 
meanwhile sitting grim and judicative in a 
chair. The lady appeared to evince no particu¬ 
lar interest in the transactions which were going 
forward, so it may not unreasonably be surmised 
that the course of the piece, had I stayed it out, 
would have brought to light a third, and more 
favoured, amoroso, not a hundred miles off all 
this time, who in the penultimate scene would 
have surreptitiously elapsed with her, she having 
in the usual manner squeezed herself into his arms 
through a practicable window in the third flat; the 
last scene being of course devoted to the happy 
reconciliation of all parties, and paternal-emo¬ 
tion-business by the lieaw father. There is 


61 


nothing new under the sun,* for a London 
cabby’s figurative language to me of u about arf 
past eleven ven the tlieaytres bustis ” may be 
viewed as a tolerably close reproduction of the 
idea residing in the term which expressed the 
exit places of an ancient amphitheatre. They 
were called the “ vomitoria.” The word inter¬ 
prets itself sufficiently by its sound to spare me 
the ungraceful duty of translating it for you. 

There is a famous fish market at Verona. 
Such markets out of Whitechapel (but that 
exception is an emphatic one) are to my taste 
very pleasant spectacles, since fresh fish look so 
bright, and cool, and clean. Here were pike in 
their coats of delicate gray shot with that 
peculiar green of which they appear to enjoy a 
monopoly; grayling in their armour of silver 

* Except, as in travelling one sometimes finds to one's cost, 
continental bread, which appeals to be a tenacious compound of 
oakum and birdlime. 


62 


scales; tench as golden as if from the Pactolus, 
and looking like shapely nuggets of bullion; 
carp, too, which one might almost have imagined 
susceptible of coining as they lay; glittering 
dace from the Adige, and a variety of other 
finny beauties which were strangers to me, 
but all shining as energetically as if they 
had just been steeped in a strong solution 
of liquid sunshine. There were frogs, too, 
for sale, ready skinned for cooking, and 
looking in that condition quite indelicately 
naked. There is also a very good fruit 
market at Verona. In the great heat of 
Lombardy, pears must be regarded as the most 
valuable item of the commissariat. They are 
sold by weight. Those green melons with the 
red insides which look so dreadfully like animal 
flesh, seemed to be a staple article of commerce. 
They recalled to my remembrance the appear- 


63 


ance presented by the sectional views of the 
policemen who are annually cut in half in the 
comic business of pantomimes. 

There are current in Venetia certain disre¬ 
putably dirty pieces of money whose name at 
this moment I forget, but they are so obliterated 
and generally low in quality and condition that 
it is much more easy to fancy them to be 
squashed pewter buttons, or cartridges cut out 
of a lead pipe, than the veritable coinage of 
a realm. -It used to afford me some little 
amusement to give one of these pieces to the 
old women at the fruit stalls, and see what it 
would produce in the pear line. Thereupon 
ensued an elaborate process of weighing, re¬ 
sulting occasionally in some slight perplexity 
if the pears proved unaccommodating in 
making up the precise value required with 
sufficient exactitude. If in the eventual issue 


64 


the proper tale of fruit could not be exactly 
squared with the amount received, it is pretty 
safe to conclude that the buyer didn’t get the 
benefit of the doubt ! unless human nature at 
Verona is a wholly different article, and com¬ 
mercial morality there of a diametrically oppo¬ 
site complexion from what they are universally 
elsewhere. The pieces of money referred to 
are supposed, but the assumption is an ex¬ 
tremely violent one, to be silver. It is very 
difficult in some other particulars do accede to 
the views which you are invited to take of the 
Austrian currency. You frequently get a large 
coin, thin no doubt, but of rather imposing 
girth, and which therefore ought to go for 
something. Owing however to its depreciation, 
which arises from the unscrupulous way in 
which the Government has doctored the cur¬ 
rency, it is difficult enough to determine its 


65 


precise value even within its own proper sphere 
of circulation, and it would prove an extremely 
fruitless enterprise to attempt to arrive at more 
than a rough approximate conjecture of its 
equivalent in English pence. So that it is a little 
disappointing to find by practical experiment 
how little your unknown coin will bring you in 
return for its value had and received. Its nom¬ 
inal worth is found to hear the analogous ratio, 
in point of insignificance, to its actual value, 
which the professions of sanctimonious or 
strictly “particular” people commonly do to 
their practice. While we are on the subject of 
Austrian money it may be mentioned that the 
fourpenny bank notes which formed the staple 
of the Imperial small currency some years ago, 
have now ceased to exist. They have been 
replaced in Austria proper by other paper, 
nominally of a higher value, but inasmuch as 

F 


66 


the national exchequer displays an indefatigable 
ingenuity in continuing for ever to discover 
deeper and deeper abysses of discredit to plunge 
into, it is impossible to pronounce at any given 
moment what may be the reciprocal relations 
which may chance to exist for the time being 
between the legal symbols of value and the 
amounts which they are supposed to represent. 
When a gentleman has had the misfortune to 
go in a pecuniary sense “to the bad,” or, as 
might be said in an aggravated case, “to the 
worse,” or “worst,” it does’nt much matter to 
you what figure his I 0 U which you hold may 
bear. So, also, if a beggar gives you a cheque, 
the amount is immaterial; you may, as in the 
case of a decimal fraction, freely add an in¬ 
definite number of ciphers to the right of what¬ 
ever sum may be indicated by it without in any 
degree affecting its value thereby. Those four- 


07 


penny bank notes used to constitute the recog¬ 
nised tariff of remuneration for all small services, 
from seeming from the chambermaid at your inn 
the indulgence of a second half-pint of water for 
the more satisfactory prosecution (in adherence 
to the odd prejudices of Englishmen with refer¬ 
ence to occasionally washing their hands) of 
your toilet operations, up to facilitating your 
passage through the passport office. When 
staying at Vienna some years ago, I received 
one day a peremptory summons to appear at the 
police office at ten o’clock on the following 
morning in order to be verified by my passport. 
Happening however not to wake until eleven, I 
looked in in a friendly way somewhere towards 
half-past two, being then, no doubt, a trifle 
overdue. The chief official got up a good deal 
of sternness on the occasion, and betrayed a 

tendency to make difficulties and delay, but 

f 2 


68 


knowing of course perfectly well wliat it all 
meant, I quietly slipped one of the fourpenny 
bank notes into the book at which he was 
writing. The little attention was acknowledged 
by a bow of such dignity and gracefulness as 
would have done credit to a pupil of Talma or 
Mr. Henry Bland, and my little matter was 
disposed of at once with very gratifying courtesy 
and dispatch. The effect of the vicissitudes of 
rough service upon these notes, which were re¬ 
placed but sparingly by fresh issues, was to 
reduce them to the discoloured and unwholesome 
appearance of a slut’s curling papers. Those 
which chanced to be subjected to trituration by 
the horny hands of the crones in the markets, 
passed gradually through the phase of dirty 
lint into that of tinder, and thence to a brown 
fluff. It was my practice to carry in my waist¬ 
coat pocket, for casual purposes, a little ball of 


69 


them rolled np like a walnut. It occurred to 
me that in the event of the waistcoat getting 
wet through, my money would have to he ex¬ 
tracted by a spoon in the form of a chocolate- 
colored mucilaginous paste, resembling the con¬ 
tents of a medlar, or a small linseed poultice. 
Their condition is in some degree paralleled 
by that of the notes of provincial banks in 
England, whose existence is spent in a con¬ 
tinual passage through the leather-breeches’ 
pockets of the agricultural interest. From the 
close companionship into which they are thus 
brought with nuggets of cheese, stray snuff, 
samples of corn and guano, onions, and shag 
tobacco, a composite aroma, indefinite perhaps 
in its precise character, hut very pronounced in 
degree, is found to attach to them. They also 
not unfrequently may be observed to he dappled 
with transparent spots characterised by an 


70 


unctuous glistening peculiar to themselves. The 
origin of these spots may he traced to the notes 
having been brought into contact on their travels 
with bacon, or sausages, or the like, on occasions 
when Farmer Turmuts, their proprietor for the 
time being, has considered it expedient to make 
provision for satisfying the calls of a somewhat 
peremptory appetite which is apt to occur at 
unexpected moments, by victualling a portable 
magazine with a store of animal sustenance. 
The Germans are no less provident than the 
British farmer in this respect, as appears from 
the following passage in Tennyson’s “Idylls of 
the King,” 

“ For your German from home 
When preparing to roam 
Gets out his best suit, and proceeding to stock it, 

In his coat puts his pipe, 

With some meals of cold tripe, 

And a lump of bad baccy in each breeches’ pocket.” 

The country as you proceed eastwards from 


71 


Verona becomes, if possible, more smiling still, 
and the vines are bung from tree to tree in long 
festoons which present a far more picturesque 
appearance than do the emaciated ghosts of 
starved raspberry bushes which to all appearance 
form the usual constituents of a vineyard else¬ 
where. Without violating the terms of our 
agreement about abjuring statistics this evening, 
I may, and ought, to give you a slight sketch 
of the agricultural condition and aspect of North 
Italy. The great Lombard plain which stretches 
from the Alps to the Adriatic (shown on the 
map) is the most highly cultivated, and, in 
proportion to its extent, the most densely 
populated spot in Europe. Its chief produc¬ 
tions are Indian corn, rice, wine, and silk. The 
remarkable vigour of fertility which distinguishes 
it arises from the circumstance that strong heat 
and abundant moisture, the two main stimulants 


72 


of vegetable energy, are tlierc combined. You 
must all know wbat “ water-meadows ” are. 
We have none in Sussex, but they are very 
common along the course of streams such as 
the Itchen in Hampshire, and you know how 
supernaturally luxuriant and vividly green they 
are. So green indeed are they, that if a painter 
were to represent one on canvass in its true 
colours, as it actually exists, cockney critics, 
unacquainted with the original, would be sure to 
say that he had tried to improve upon nature. 
And the crops seem to succeed one another at 
intervals of about ten minutes or so all through 
the warm weather! Well, this Lombard plain 
is one vast, natural, ready-made, water-meadow. 
For in the valleys and recesses of the Alps 
which fringe it upon the north continuously, 
and throughout its whole length, lakes are 
formed by the melting of the snows and 


73 


by the drainage from the higher grounds. The 
overflow of the water which is thus constantly 
gathering into these natural reservoirs, is carried 
off by a system of waste pipes in the form of 
rivers, which, almost without exception, traverse 
the plain in a due-southerly direction, and pour 
their contributions into the river Po, which in 
its turn pays them over to the Adriatic. A series 
of parallel channels having been thus supplied 
by the accidents of the geographical structure 
of the region, all that was required to render 
them equivalent in value to the golden stream 
of the Pactolus, was the simple alchemy, first, of 
supplementing the main arteries by a subsidiary 
system of small veins for distributing abroad 
their liquid treasures, and secondly, of shaping 
the whole surface of the district into smooth 
facets, as diamond polishers call them, of the 
proper inclinations for being alternately drained 


74 


and inundated, as required by the varying 
exigencies of agricultural operations. The heat 
by which vegetation is spurred into a gallop, 
and by which even that sobersided old party the 
domestic cabbage is kept in a fiz of hot excite¬ 
ment, is of course the free and unstinted gift 
of an Italian sky. It is, indeed, as rhetorical 
housemaids say of their feelings, u more than 
pen.” The sun seems to rain down a torrent of 
fire “potentius ictu fulmineo.” Last season 
was an unusual one, and this Lombard plain, 
which in the mildest summer is like Darius’ 
burning fiery furnace, was last September heated 
seven times hotter than it is wont to be heated. 
No weather of any kind ever affects my arrange¬ 
ments in the smallest particular. But it cannot 
be denied that an apprehension did occasionally 
suggest itself that the case of the prince in the 
Arabian Nights who travelled into the kingdom 


75 


of the sun, where the heat upon his head was so 
great that he could distinctly hear his brains 
boiling, might not impossibly be paralleled by 
the occurrence of a corresponding phenomenon 
in my own person. It would be natural enough 
to expect to dig up one’s potatoes ready baked, 
where the ground is hut live embers. The crops 
are arranged with unvarying and most mono¬ 
tonous regularity in an endless succession of 
oblong patches, after a fashion of which the 
key board of a piano may perhaps be taken as 
an illustrative representation. Pictures of 
hedges may possibly exist as curiosities in local 
museums, but they are otherwise unknown in 
Lombardy. Timber trees are grown on the 
lower declivities of the Alps, but none on the 
plain. The white mulberry, which is planted 
in rows bearing about the same proportion in 
point of number to the other crops as the sharps 


76 


and flats do to the rest of the key board of a 
piano, looks almost too artificially symmetrical 
to be a downright offspring of nature. It 
reminds one of the trees known to boxes of 
children’s toys with those supernaturally regular 
stems capped by balls of wiry verdure which 
are mathematically accurate spheres, and all as 
undistinguishably like one another as a file of 
policemen. These mulberry trees are not so 
nice as our mulberry trees, inasmuch as they 
bear no fruit. They are cultivated only for 
their leaves, on which silkworms are fed. 
A disease has lately appeared among silkworms 
which in some parts of the south of Europe 
has destroyed them wholesale. Great anxiety 
prevails in Lombardy lest the plague should give 
them a call there. In the event of its 
doing so the disaster will be a serious one, 
since the value of the raw silk now pro- 


i / 

dnced there is nearly £4,000,000 a year. 
The grape disease has already proved a heavy 
calamity, for the loss which Venetian Lombardy 
has sustained through it has been nearly 
£3,000,000 during each of the last six years. 
And this, too, in a country whose population is 
considerably greater in proportion to its extent 
than that of any other district of Europe. The 
trunk roads of Lombardy are famous, such as a 
Telford might be proud to own. I abstain from 
telling you the exact sum of money which has 
been spent in the last twenty-five years in 
bringing them into the consummate applepie 
order which now distinguishes them, for fear of 
laying myself open to the impeachment of 
dealing too much in statistics.* They form a 
very striking contrast to the channels of transit 
which we enjoy down here in Sussex. 1 use the 


* It is £1,350,000. 


78 


term u enjoy” only in tlie peculiar and idiomatic 
sense in which, according- to the expression used 
in this county, a person is said to u enjoy ” bad 
health, or by a common mode of speech, is 
alleged to u rejoice” in the name of Buggins. 
The delight which transitive verbs are stated by 
the old Eton Greek grammar to feel in the 
particular cases of the substantives which they 
govern must also doubtless be viewed as a 
correspondingly tranquil form of gratification. 
The main roads here are decent enough it is true, 
but our lanes, in which you plunge about, 
distressed in body and disheartened in mind, 
immersed up to the eyebrows in a squishy, yellow, 
glutinous, slush, of preternatural tenacity, are 
abysses compared to which the slough of despond 
of the Pilgrim’s Progress was a billiard table 
or a Dutch floor. There are but few secondary 
roads in Lombardy, and carts are seldom seen, 


79 


since tlie whole country is treated as a garden, 
and its cultivators carry all that is to he taken 
to or from the land on their heads. The women 
are quite as staunch at heavy labour as the men. 
I don’t know whether Miss Proctor considers it 
to be in accordance with woman’s mission to 
become a female navvy. The result upon the 
feminine form is to make it as muscular and 
stringy as a drayman’s, or Cuckfield mutton, and 
from the same cause the faces of the fair sex 
are as brown and wrinkled as Normandy pippins, 
or a Chimpanzee’s hands. 

On approaching Venice, if you keep your head 
out of the railway carriage, as probably nobody 
could help doing, to catch the first sight of the 
famous city, you will see the object of your 
pilgrimage right out at sea, and that your course 
thither by railway is across a bridge two miles 
and a half long, and strongly fortified. On 


80 


my arrival at the terminus, the satisfaction 
which would naturally have attended the cir¬ 
cumstance of finding oneself for the first time 
actually at Venice, was deferred for a while by 
the absorbing spectacle of wounded soldiers 
which the station presented. Our train brought 
three or four luggage vans full of such as were 
unable to sit up, while about the same number 
of third class carriages were charged with a 
similar freight of victims not quite so helpless. 
These however bore traces of having undergone 
a pretty considerably rough tattooing at the 
hands of ferocious Turcos and remorseless 
Chasseurs d’Afrique. Every train at this time 
which arrived at Venice brought its miserable 

cargo of suffering wretches. It is very easy— 

nothing apparently can be more so—for we 

# 

constantly see it accomplished by such stupid 
people, to set oneself up, by the delivery of a 


81 


few hackneyed platitudes about the horrors of 
war, on a sort of sublime height above the rest 
of the world, of elevated philanthropy. My 
own taste certainly does not lie that way, and I 
would much rather incur the imputation of 
offending in the opposite direction, namely of 
being thought to speak with unbecoming levity 
of serious and touching things. But on seeing, 
even so late as three months after the absolute 
termination of hostilities, a sad, slow, tide of 
wounded men, in piteous suffering and dis¬ 
figurement, still ebbing, and that without sign 
of cessation, from the shores of a certain Red 
Sea, this, even more than the mounds of 
Magenta and Solferino, eloquent as they were 
of u the butcher-work that there befel,” 
made it impossible to help feeling that of all 
Imperial pastimes war is the most objectionable. 

Congresses and international arbitration won t 

G 


82 


do much for the preservation of peace. A 
philosopher in petticoats, Jeannette, has sug¬ 
gested the only arrangement which would 
indeed put an effective extinguisher on the 
flame of military ardour of aggressive potentates 
when she says 

“O! if I were Queen of France, or, still better, Pope of 
Rome, 

I would have no fighting men abroad, no weeping maids at 
home; 

All the world should be at peace, or if kings must show their 
might, 

Then let them who make the quarrels he the only ones who 
fight.” 

It may be remarked here, in a short parenthesis, 
that the parting of a soldier bound for the wars, 
from his wife or sweetheart, is a subject which 
has proved the source of the happiest inspiration 
to two poets separated from one another by an 
interval of between two and three thousand 
years. I refer to Hector and Andromache, and 
Jeannette and Jeannot. “Jeannette and 


83 


JeannotP some of yon may exclaim, “the 
most childish and the most hackneyed ballad 
that exists!” No doubt it is. The childish 
simplicity of its thoughts and language are 
precisely the points wherein its charm resides, 
and as for its being hackneyed, why of course 
it is, and so it must be, until to have a heart 
which can be touched by pure and natural 
pathos has become an exploded fashion. So 
much for my moralizing on war ! 

The actual reality of being at Venice is 

brought home to one’s mind on leaving the 

station by the circumstance of having to ship 

oneself and portmanteau on board a gondola 

instead of an omnibus for transport to the 

hotel. The extreme quietude of the place, all 

the streets being of course silent highways, has 

a dreamy and impressive effect. You seem to 

have entered a sort of mesmeric atmosphere, 

G 2 


84 


such as must have prevailed within the magical 
hedge of thorns where Rosebud and her estab¬ 
lishment took their hundred years’ nap. A 
carriage and horses would be the objects of 
precisely as much astonishment at Venice as 
would attend the appearance of a gondola in 
Piccadilly. Many of you may be already familiar 
from pictures with the look of a gondola. Here 
is a print, and also a model of one. You re¬ 
member Byron's description of the article, 


Did’st ever see a gondola ? for fear 

You should not, I’ll describe it you exactly : 

’Tis a long covered boat that’s common here, 
Carved at the prow, built lightly, but compactly, 
Rowed by two rowers, each called “ Gondolier,” 

It glides along the water looking blackly, 

Just like a coffin clapt in a canoe 

Where none can make out what you say or do. 

And up and down the long canals they go, 

And under the Rialto shoot along, 

By night and day, all paces, swift and slow, 

And round the theatres, a sable throng, 

They wait in their dusk livery of woe, 

But not to them do woful things belong, 

For sometimes they contain a deal of fun, 

Like mourning coaches when the funeral’s done. 


85 


The gondolas being all painted entirely black 
within and without, and being also covered with 
a serge wrapper which in appearance is first 
cousin, if not own brother, to a pall, present as 
funereal an aspect as if each of them were a 
veritable Charon’s wherry. This sable uniform 
was prescribed by the sumptuary laws of the 
stern old Republic, for it seems that the mer¬ 
chant princes of ancient Venice were apt to 
display a somewhat excursive taste in the 
adornment of their gondolas. The injunction has 
been renewed by the Austrian police on another 
ground, which is this. Before the present 
government succeeded in ousting every single 
Venetian of any consideration whatever from 
the place, and in quenching the last feebly 
glimmering hopes of nationality, the grandees 
of the city, such as they were, used to “sport 
their colours,” as English prizefighters do theirs 


86 


with their handkerchiefs, upon the rich silk 
coverings, and other appliances, of their gondolas. 
So the Austrians, who go upon Sir reter 
Laurie’s principle of 66 putting down” every¬ 
thing which is susceptible of being forbidden, 
whatever its merits may be, pronounced these 
colours to be employable as seditious ensigns, 
and enjoined the existing one universal black 
livery for the gondolas, which makes them look 
like so many floating hearses. Their attire of 
mourning weeds is now but too much in con¬ 
sonance with the present condition of Venice 

itself, and the spirits of its miserable citizens. 

*• 

A gondola is the snuggest thing in the world to 
be ensconced in, and of course a jolt is impossible. 
But its strongly-accented staccato method of 
progression, consisting as it of a continuous 
series of jerks forward upon receiving successive 
impulses from the oars, is excessively unpleasant. 


87 


I much prefer the more equable prestissimo of 
a Hansom, the allegro con brio of a Dublin car, 
or the comfortable and tranquil andante of that 
interminable Thames - Tunnel-or - arcade - upon- 
wheels a Parisian omnibus. 

Danaeli’s Hotel, where I established myself, is 
the Mivart’s of Venice, and good, but dear. Its 
situation, looking, as it does, over the Lagune, 
is unrivalled. But it is the very head quarters 
of mosquitoes, and those, too, of the perversest 
and most aggressive description. According to 
the theory of the u Vestiges of Creation,” 
nature supplies every animal with anatomical 
arrangements adapted to fulfil all the exigencies 
which will be incident to the circumstances of 
its life. If this be true, Venetians generally, 
and the* inhabitants of the edge of the Lagune 
in particular, should have been furnished with 
claws for accomplishing the eternal scratching 


88 


which an existence passed in the midst of a 
cloud of brisk mosquitoes must naturally involve. 
Usually it is very easy to checkmate the 
miscreants by the following tactics. When you 
go to your bedroom at night, shut the window, 
because the candle gives notice of your where¬ 
abouts to all the mosquitoes of the district, and 
of course it would be impossible to cope with 
the enemy, if renewed swarms in inexhaustible 
numbers were permitted to come up fresh and 
fresh to the attack. Then shake the curtains to 
dislodge any of the rascals who may have 
settled there. Then go round the room with 
a candle, carefully examining the walls and 
ceiling, and wherever you see a mosquito, give 
her a delicate pat with the sole of a slipper, or the 
back of a hair brush, so as to squeeze her out 
quite flat. This will keep her perfectly quiet, and 
there is no difficulty whatever in exterminating 


89 


the plagues in this manner, since they remain 
quite still to be “ patted.” It cannot be denied 
that the walls and ceilings are not improved 
by becoming dappled with the little red spots 
which are the result of the course of action 
above described, and which are suggestive of the 
apartment having come out with an eruption of 
lively nettle rash, but nobody’s scruples on this 
point would survive a night of exposure to 
mosquitoes. Besides that, the probability is 
that you will only be adding some additional 
layers to the rich stucco with which similar 
operations on the part of preceding travellers 
have already plastered the walls. But the 
rooms at Danaeli’s are so high, that after 
attempting in vain to reach the ceiling by 
means of a scaffolding of miscellaneous fur¬ 
niture, which proved to be an enterprise fraught 
with peril arising from the precarious stability 


90 


of the structure, I was obliged to lie clown in 
presence of the enemy, with as forlorn a hope 
of any rest as if a Mrs. Caudle, armed with a 
paper of pins, and in the worst of tempers, had 
been the sharer of my bed. 

There were three Americans at Danaeli’s who 
appeared to have joined company in travelling 
on the strength of an acquaintance on the part 
of all three with one Brown. It seemed that the 
account given by Brown on his return home of 
all that he had seen and done on his travels 
must have been what incited them to follow 
his example. For their staple subject of con¬ 
versation was what Brown had done, and what 
he hadn’t, and considerable warmth of argument 
sometimes ensued when their opinions proved 
to be at variance on any point in this question. 
It appeared to me that it would have been 
difficult to invent any more unprofitable or silly 


91 


topic to which the continued attention of rea¬ 
sonable men could by possibility have been 
addressed. 

I happened to arrive at Venice very ravenous 

just as the table d’hote was beginning, and so 

% 

was tempted to join the other guests thereat, 
but to sit interminably to listen to a parcel of 
affected nonsense talked by a set of excrucia¬ 
tingly vulgar English, just as one arrived at 
Venice , was more than human nature, at least as 
it is developed in me, could endure, so I surrep¬ 
titiously elapsed, and in a few minutes found 
myself leaning over the parapet of the Rialto. 
Most people have heard of the Rialto, and the 
idea of it is connected in their minds with 
something beautiful or romantic. It is a melan¬ 
choly duty to have to demolish those agree¬ 
able impressions, but it will save any of you 
who may hereafter visit Venice some disap- 


92 


pointment to learn beforehand that the Rialto is 

an exceedingly ugly structure, not so large, as it 

seemed to me, as one arch of Blackfriars Bridge, 

and that if you stand upon it to muse upon 

Venice and all that sort of thing, you will find 

* 

it very difficult to disconnect your meditations 
from the subject of the overwhelming smell¬ 
iness which prevails on the spot. It has a 
double row of mean shops upon it, of the 
Ratcliff Highway stamp, where miscellaneous 
vulgar articles, such as coarse cotton handker¬ 
chiefs, twopenny corkscrews, and boots like 
miniature barges, are sold. The backs of these 
shops are of boarding, or some untidy and 
unsubstantial-looking material, which of course 
presents an uncomfortable appearance as viewed 
from the water on either side. Having thus been 
compelled by the necessity of adhering to truth to 
do the Rialto a bad turn by painting it in its real 


93 


light, that of an extremely ugly little structure, 
I must go still further, and dissipate the interest 
which it probably holds fraudulent possession of 
in your minds as the place where merchants, as 
it would seem from Shylock’s words, 

“ Signor Antonio, many a time and oft, 

In the Rialto you have rated me ” 

were wont to congregate in the days when the 
leviathan grandees of Venetian commerce were 
not, as they have now come to be, costermongers 
of the Whitechapel stamp, and a few old apple- 
women. The “ Rialto,” when etymologically 
dissected, means u the high bank,” one of the 
quays on the Grand Canal, which was, and still is, 
a favorite rendezvous of the Venetians, and where 
stands the Exchange.* But it is quite another 

* “I sotto portichi sono (1580) ogni giorni frequentati da i 
mercatanti Fiorentini, Genovesi, Milanesi, Spagnuoli, Turchi, 
e d’altre nationi diverse del mondo, i quali vi concorrono in tanta 
copia, che questa piazza e annoverata fra le prime dell’ 
universo.” 


94 


tiling from the bridge of the Rialto, which only 
leads to it, but which has now somehow or other 
slipped into a felonious usurpation of the mean¬ 
ing properly to be connected with the name. 
The Rialto u where merchants most do congre¬ 
gate,” if it had been only the bridge, would 
have afforded so limited a space available for 
any such meeting, that one might just as well 
talk of the Cuckfield rifle corps u congregating ” 
in a sentry box. The other famous bridge of 
Venice is The Bridge of Sighs, here, in this 
picture, and so called because it was over it, or 
rather, through it, for it is a narrow covered 
passage, that prisoners were taken from the 
old prison to the Hall of Judgment in the 
Doge’s Palace. It hardly amounts to our idea 
of a bridge, since its span, as far as I recollect, 
is not above twelve feet or so. Besides these, 
there are between three and four hundred little 


95 


bridges in Venice, by means of which you are 
enabled to walk from any one point to any other 
point of the town, if you wish it. It will usually, 
however, be shorter to go by water, since the 
Grand Canal, which wriggles tortuously through 
the city, as you observe in this picture, is spanned 
by the Rialto only. To a man of active habits who 
can appreciate the luxury of a brisk walk, and 
who has no taste for lolling listlessly about in a 
boat, Venice would be simply intolerable as a 
residence, consisting as it does of a labyrinth of 
narrow, stuffy, and crowded, alleys, whence but 
a very thin slice of sky can be seen, and where 
the air has a certain taste and feel which may 
be described by saying that it seems as if 
it were but a second-hand article. So that 
pedestrianism in Venice doesn’t come to much, 
and consequently it is to be supposed that the 
shoemaking trade can evince but symptons of 


96 


as low and languid vitality as one would tliink 
must attend the proceedings of tlie u leather 
breeches makers to the Queen” whose advertise¬ 
ments are so startling in the picture which they 
suggest to the imagination, of Her Majesty— 
well—perhaps upon the whole it is as well that 
this sentence should remain unconcluded. 

The first thing to be done on getting into a 
strange city is to go to the top of the highest 
tower it contains, and thence take a survey of 
things in general, and get acquainted with the 
local geography. Here is a good bird’s eye view 
of Venice. This (shown in the picture) high 
bell-tower is just the thing for the purpose. 
The panorama of the city as seen from this 
point, lying embosomed in the sea, with its 
suburbs occupying adjacent islands, and the low 
shores of Lombardy in the distance, is magnifi¬ 
cent and unique. At your feet is the Piazzetta 


97 


San Marco, with the cathedral at its northern 
end, the old palace of the Doges forming its 
eastern side, while on the south are those two 
granite columns, pictures of which are to he 
seen in almost every print shop in the world. 
One of them is crowned bv the lion of St. Mark, 
and the other by the figure of St. Theodore. 
Set at right angles to this square is a large 
oblong space, very much like the Palais Royal, 
only handsomer. These two great squares, since 
they are the only large open expanses of terra 
firma which the city can boast of, must have 
been of old brilliant scenes, being the very 
heart and nucleus of the gaiety and splendour 
of Venice. For 

“ Of all the places where the Carnival 
Was most facetious in the days of yore, 

For dance, and song, and serenade, and bail, 

And masque, and mime, and mystery, and more 
Than I have time to tell now, or at all, 

Venice the bell from every city bore.” 

L.ofC. 


H 




In the evil days which have now fallen on the 
city, the square of St. Mark is principally 
peopled with Austrian soldiers (ga va sans dire), 
and pigeons. These pigeons have been recog¬ 
nised occupants of the spot since a time whence, 
in the beautiful language of the law, “ the 
memory of man runneth not to the contrary,” 
and they have always been under the protec¬ 
tion of the public. They reminded me of the 
tame pigeons of the sanctuary which play so 
prominent a part in the plot of Euripides’ 
Ion. 

Perhaps you never suspected that the Panta¬ 
loon of our Christmas pantomimes derives his 
name from the lion of St. Mark. But he does. 
In this way. The Lion of St. Mark was the 
standard of the Venetian republic, and Venice 
was called “ Pianta leone,” “ the lion-planter,” 
for a reason which Byron will tell you. 


99 


“ In youth she was all glory,—a new Tyre,— 

Her very by-word, sprang from victory, 

The “ Planter of the lion,” which through fire 
And blood she bore o’er subject earth and sea; 
Though making many slaves, herself still free.” 


Now tlie Pantaloon of the earliest Italian 
Comedy was a Venetian burgher. He was 
originally dressed, as you see by this picture, in 
a manner similar to that from which a well- 
known article of modern dress has derived its 
name. There is a church at Venice, the tower 
of which is shown in Burford’s panorama, 
dedicated to St. Pantaleone. 

Now I am not going to say a word about the 

“ storied walls,” or antiquities, or art-treasures, 

or history, or the architectural magnificence, of 

Venice, or of its glorious triad, Titian, Tasso, 

and Tintoretto, simply because those subjects 

are too wide to be touched upon this evening. 

We have to be back at Cuckfield, you know, by 

nine o’clock, and anybody who has been to Venice, 

h 2 

L. of C. 





100 


and is not a mere barbarian or an Austrian, 
ought to be able to write a clothes’ basket full 
of MS. about Tintoretto only. If you wish to 
know the history of Venice, you may gratify 
that desire by devoting a very pleasant half 
hour any one of these evenings to a little book 
called u Venice,” which is on these shelves. 
Perhaps, however, you may like to know at 
once how the place came to be built in so strange 
a situation, whether it was that it drifted some¬ 
how out to sea, or whether it popped up ready¬ 
made to the surface like the island of Delos did, 
to the utter conflabbergastation, no doubt, of 
the Mr. Wyld and other map sellers of the 
period who were in business at the date of its 
debut. No: Venice did not make so startling: 
a first appearance as that. In the fourth century, 
when Attila, king of the Huns, and called u the 
scourge of God,” ravaged the north part of 


101 


Italy, many of the inhabitants abandoned their 
country, and took refuge in the islands of the 
Adriatic Sea. There they drove in piles for the 
foundations of houses, and built—Venice. 
Sea air seemed to suit the constitution of the 
state which they established, for the republic 
became great in wealth and power. The govern¬ 
ment was not by any means what we in England 
should consider a good one, for though nomi¬ 
nally a republic, it was practically an aristocratic 
oligarchy. The chief magistrate was the Doge, 
who was so subjected to the will of his council 
that he seems to have been much more of a state 
slave, or prisoner, than a ruler. For example, he 
was forbidden to go to the mainland, or, as it 
might very properly be expressed, go ashore, 
without leave, and if this were refused, he 
suffered of course the precise identical hard¬ 
ship which drove the crew of the Princess 


102 


Royal to mutiny at Portsmouth some weeks 
ago. He was also liable to another grave in¬ 
convenience, namely, that of having his eyes 
put out if he didn’t happen to please his 
turbulent subjects. For the Venetians of 
old had a nasty trick of u serving out” in this 
barbarous manner any Doge whose proceedings 
didn’t happen to meet with their approbation. 
If you read the history of Venice, you will 
find that out of about forty Doges elected 
during a period of four centuries, nearly one 
half were either killed, or had their eyes put 
out, or were compelled to retire to some 
remote convent. He played a better part 
however, to judge from the historical pictures 
in the Doges’ palace at Venice, in public 
pageants. On these occasions he was dressed 
in magnificent robes, as you see in this picture, 
and in fact fulfilled analogous duties to those 


103 


of another state functionary known to the 
household arrangements of our domestic life 
as 4 ‘ the bright poker. ’ ’ Every year he conducted 
a ceremony termed “ wedding the Adriatic” by 
being rowed out to sea in his state barge called 
the Bucentaur, of which this is a picture, and 
dropping a ring into the sea with the words 
u Desponsamus te, mare, in signum veri per- 
petuique dominii.” “ We espouse thee, 0 sea, 
in token of real and perpetual dominion.” I 
forbear to make the remark that more genial 
Mare-s might be found, far better calculated to 
satisfy one’s matrimonial aspirations. The idea 
therefore contained in the well-known line of 
u Beautiful Venice the Bride of the Sea,” isn't 
quite consistent with what is implied in the 
ceremonial referred to, since, of course, with the 
slight exception of u the dashing white Ser¬ 
jeant,” the parties to a wedding can’t both be 


104 


brides. It seems to me to have been an 
extremely childish proceeding. At least, if one 
of our Sussex farmers were to take so strange a 
whim into his head as to bury a ring in his 
field every spring, and talk some rubbish 
over it in Latin about marrying the land, 
such a piece of extravagance would very 
properly result in his consignment to the 
County Lunatic Asylum. 

The Venetian republic was finally overthrown 
by Napoleon. Since then, poor Venice has 
been, as you know, subject to Austrian rule, 
which is equivalent to saying that it has been 
groaning under a dull, heavy, senseless, tyranny, 
without the slightest susceptibility of humanized 
feeling, without the least regard for any build¬ 
ings or monuments which form the objects of 
reverence or interest to cultivated minds, with 
no idea of government beyond obtaining money 


105 


by fraud or oppression, and whose only language 
is the bayonet. Austrian government, indeed, 
seems to me, after observing its action in its 
German and Hungarian, as well as its Italian 
provinces, to be simply the greatest evil, and 
the worst obstacle to human progress, which 
exists. Perhaps there may be no particular 
grammar to speak of in some of the last 
sentences, but on such a subject it is difficult 
to write with that calm equanimity which the 
shaping of symmetrical literary periods re¬ 
quires. It is devoutly to be hoped that the 
revolution which must be expected will come, 
and that right early. Owing to the Austrian 
incubus by which it is depressed, Venice 
is of all triste cities the most lowspirited. 
There are no theatres, 66 no nothing.” The 
rich people have left it, as the Austrians 
are unbearable, so the shops there (and you 


106 


will remember it was once the richest 
emporium of Europe) are hardly equal to 
those of Chichester or Hastings. The palaces 
which one has heard so much of are dilapidated 
and scaly to the last degree, and if its present 
political blight should continue, Venice will 
soon come to be a wilderness of decayed and 
mouldering tenements, inhabited by a horde of 
dull and dirty barbarians in the Austrian 
uniform, keeping down about half their 
own number of discontented and desperate 
beggars. 

I said Venice was triste. Fancy w T hat a 
residence in a towm absolutely devoid of news¬ 
papers must be to one accustomed to London 
Clubs, and to whom The Tunes and The Saturday 
Review are as the breath of his nostrils, and to 
whom the end of a week without its Era is as 
difficult a thing to imagine as a German with a 


107 


clean shirt. It is a blank such as an admirer of 
the fair sex would have experienced on going to 
stay with St. Senanus. I rather imagine that 
Venice was in a state of siege at the time of my 
visit, so perhaps its condition of literary starva¬ 
tion may have been a little more deplorable than 
usual just then. However that may have been, 
it is certain that all newspapers containing any 
intelligence relating to Italy were strictly prohi¬ 
bited, and since every periodical publication in 
the world was at that time almost wholly 
surrendered to this particular topic, it may be 
conceived how we were off for news ! I did, 
indeed, procure a Venetian paper, the circulation 
of which was permitted because it was free from 
reference to the forbidden topic, but my motive 
in its purchase was simply that of curiosity to 
see what it could be like. It was a very small 
sheet, something like a London playbill, only 


108 


shorter, and of a vivid green, and its leading 
article on the weather, or some equally unexcit¬ 
ing subject, was as meek as Austrian jealousy 
could desire. A newspaper which eschews the 
only topic which anybody cares to read about, 
corresponds very closely to the proverbial 
“ Hamlet ! (omitting the part of the Prince 
of Denmark).” Nay, it was actually worse 
than that. For in the course of a somewhat 
extended experience of theatrical performances, 
I have actually known the play of Hamlet 
almost wholly relieved of its principal part, 
which was probably found somewhat oppres¬ 
sive by the gentleman who “ did ” the leading 
tragic business of the house. However, to make 
matters all square with us, the audience, the 
course of the performance received an unex¬ 
pected embellishment in the shape of “ Mr. 
Smithers with the Chinese dance,” which he 


109 


executed in a very gratifying manner. The 
Austrian government provided us with no such 
compensating advantage in the privation of our 
legitimate literary food. Talking of Hamlet 
reminds me of having mentioned that the 
theatres w^ere shut up at Venice. This was a 
consequence of the general ruin and bankruptcy 
which prevailed, but had things been otherwise, 
it is most likely that the A.l. of all intellectual 
and cheerful amusements would have been 
prohibited by the government. For everything 
beyond mere simple existence, and that in a 
slavish and unworthy form alone, is forbidden. 
If you were to sneeze, it would not be at all 
surprising to learn that an Imperial ordinance 
had been violated thereby, and a penalty incur¬ 
red, or at least that your passport required a 
fresh visa upon the occurrence. In the absence 
however of the regular drama, the cravings of 


110 


an imperious theatrical appetite could be in 
some degree cheated into quiescence, if not 
satisfied, by the ^regular drama. For at Venice 
there are little peripatetic theatres, like our 
Punch and Judys, but with tiny painted 
scenes, so pretty and effective that one might 
imagine oneself to be contemplating real bowers 
of Lilliput, or admiring chef d’oeuvres of 
Beverley through an opera glass turned the 
wrong way. And there is a row of regular 
footlights, only so small that they look like 
fairy lanterns, or a sparkling chain of diamonds, 
or a procession of glowworms. The performers 
are marionettes, who play, or, are played, so 
well, that many actors of a larger mould, though 
quite as wooden-headed, would do well to learn 
the rudiments of gesture from them. I brought 
home a corps dramatique of this kind in my 
portmanteau, and here they are. Each of these 


Ill 


costumes lias an interesting history of its own 

which I cannot go into here. If you want a hearty 

laugh, read the description of the Genoese 

marionettes in Dickens’ u Pictures from Italy,” 

which of course is in this room. Sacred dramas 

are often done on these duodecimo stages, in 

which the most solemn scenes of the Gospel 

history are introduced. You must not suppose 

that there is any profanity in this practice. To 

minds differently constituted from our own it 

«/ 

constantly happens that things of all kinds 
appear in a totally different light from that in 
which we should regard them. In the u Juif 
Errant” which was played a few years ago at 
the principal Opera House at Paris, there are 
scenes which it would be impossible to describe 
to you without incurring the imputation of 
irreverence, while by the French they were 
simply regarded as so many vivid tableaux 


112 


illustrative of sacred truths, and useful on 
Horace’s principle that 


“ Segnius irritant animos demissa per aures 
Quam quae sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus, et quae 
Ipse sibi tradit spectator,” 


which may he translated, roughly enough, but 
effectively, by “ the shortest cut to a man’s 
brain is through his eyes.” And though I am 
very far indeed from wishing to set forth the 
French as models of reverential feeling, yet 
English people are apt to be too hasty and self- 
confident in condemning foreigners whose habits, 
of thought they cannot enter into, simply be¬ 
cause their ways are not as our ways. It is 
perhaps not altogether impossible that a French¬ 
man might hint something or other, which 
occurs to myself, though I shall not propound it 
here, in connection with our oratorios, and Bible 
tea meetings, and Surrey Music Hall preach- 


113 


ments, and the like, which we might not be able 
quite conveniently to gainsay. Perhaps you 
may not be aware that the earliest dramatic 
representations which took place in England 
were in the nature of acted fables, and were 
called u miracle plays,” or u mysteries,” and 
afterwards, 66 moralities.” Churches were con¬ 
sidered to be the proper places for these 
entertainments, and they were used for the 

purpose.* Puppet plays are also of very ancient 

% 

date in England. They were called u motions.” 
'With them also themes from the Bible and 
stories from the lives and legends of Saints 
were the most general subjects of representation, 
as you will see if you refer, for example, to the 
fourth act and the second scene of Winter’s 

* Dodsley’s Old Plays, new edition, vol i. page 43 et seq. 

It is unnecessary to remind anyone who has heard that there 
is such a thing as French literature, that Victor Hugo’s Notre 
Dame contains a graphic account of the representation of an 
old morality. 

I 


114 


Tale, where Shakespeare makes Autolycus say 
“ Tlien he compassed a motion of the prodigal 
son,” &c. One of the most popular motions, as 
we find from Ben Johnson’s “ Every man out of 
his humour,” was “ Nineveh with Jonas and 
the Whale.” Another favourite was “ Babylon.” 
The Puritans, though they anathematised play¬ 
houses with prodigious gusto, do not seem to 
have objected to what was called a “ holy per¬ 
formance.” Scriptural motions seem not to 
have finally disappeared till fifty or sixty years 
ago, and the till lately current joke of Punch 
popping out his head from behind the side 
curtain and addressing the Patriarch in his ark, 
while the floods were pouring down, with “hazy 
weather, Master Noah! ” may possess an interest 
as being possibly the last surviving frace of an 
old “motion.” 

Since the above episode on theatrical archee- 


115 


ology was written, an article has appeared in 
The Saturday Review (of January 14th, 1860), 
on the subject of the Sunday evening services at 
the Britannia Theatre, and headed with the 
witty title of u Deus ex machina.” Its first 
paragraph is so illustrative of the matter which 
we have got upon, that I am tempted to import 
it bodily into my text. It is as follows. 

u The English Sunday is proverbially a dull 
thing, and of late attempts have been made in 
various quarters to put a little life into the 
institution. The special Sunday services, espe¬ 
cially those at St. Paul’s—where the congrega¬ 
tion becomes an audience, without feeling it to 
be part of their duty to join in worship—were 
avowedly instituted as an improvement on those 
of Exeter Hall, which in their turn owed their 
inspiration to the successful performances of 
Mr. Spurgeon at the Surrey Music Hall. In all 

i 2 




116 


these Sunday amusements there is a concealed 
dramatic element. It is a compromise between 
the theatre and the church. Perhaps there is 
nothing very remarkable in this. Religion has 
always felt that, in some way or other, the 
Church services should meet those great human 
requirements which seek, in vivid dramatic 
presentations, some relief from—to use a slang 
word—merely subjective emotions. There is 
always some edition or other of the Rook of 
Sports just published. Human nature must 
have some reaction against Sabbatarianism, and 
special services are only the Protestant form 
which that reaction takes. The old Church, 
taking under its care every department of 
human taste, and providing in some way or 
other for the universal necessities of the mind, 
found in the miracle plays and religious pageants 
a means of satisfying the dramatic and thea- 


117 


trical wants of man; and it is a fact that the 
modem European drama is the direct product 
of the mediaeval religious plays. The autos of 
the Spanish school, in which Lope is the most 
familiar name, form the most palpable link in 
this curious pedigree of the stage. But the 
connexion between religion and the drama 
might be traced higher. As all schoolboys 
know, the Greek theatre originated in the 
worship of Dionysus; and in the East, where 
the drama took a choric shape, the dramatic 
dances, even in their most sensual forms, 
had a religious significence. The ballet of the 
Paris Opera may be traced upwards to the 
sacred, if immodest, rites of the East; and 
Muller derives the mediasval mysteries in regu¬ 
lar descent from the Dionysian festivals of 
antiquity. 

“ This connexion between the stage and the 


118 


Church, if it presents a subject for curious 
historical and literary investigation, has been, 
however, long, and very properly, in abeyance.’' 

In which last sentiment I most heartily 
concur. But I’m forgetting Venice. 

Perhaps you may like to know the position 
of the city in a strategical point of view, since 
such is the condition of Europe generally, and 
of Austria in particular, at this moment, that 
the military capacities of any city take their 
place among its more prominent features of 
interest. Venice, then, would be difficult to 
take, on account of its inaccessibility. The 
water which surrounds it is, generally speaking, 
shallow, so shallow indeed, that even a gondola 

cannot skim about where it likes, but often has 

* 

to make long circumbendibuses to pass from 
one island to another without getting aground. 
A large ship of war could not get up to Venice 


119 


at all, and even the smallest craft are obliged to 
keep carefully to the channels which are indi¬ 
cated by buoys. These buoys may be removed 
of course at five minutes’ notice, and it would 
then be difficult for even an experienced native 
pilot to pick his way among the intricacies of 
the watery labyrinth. And there is no danger 
of this natural moat being bridged by a frost, 
and of an enemy’s coming over it that way, as 
occurred in Holland, since the Lagune never 
freezes. The Austrians, however, are at this 
moment busily engaged in extending the consi¬ 
derable system of fortifications which already 
exists. An Austrian fortress is, usually speaking, 
such a thickly bristling mass of cannon that its 
appearance resembles, on a larger scale, the 
general effect of a bull-dog in my possession, 
who seems from the impression derived from a 
first glance, to be all teeth. 


120 


The celebrated glass works of Venice which 
are upon the island of Murano in what may be 
called the suburbs of the city, are well worth a 
visit, “ Bugles,” and imitations of pearls and 
marbles, are made here. The following descrip¬ 
tion of glass pearls is taken from Cassell's 
Illustrated Family Paper, which, by the way, is 
a very good pennyworth. 

u Glass pearls, though among the most 
beautiful, inexpensive, and common, ornaments 
for women now made, are produced by a very 
singular process. In 1656, about two hundred 
years ago, a Venetian named Jacquin discovered 
that the scales of a fish called bleak-fish, pos¬ 
sessed the property of communicating a pearly 
hue to water. He found by experiment that 
beads dipped in this water assumed, when dried, 
the appearance of pearls. It proved, however, 
that the pearly coat, when placed outside, was 


121 


easily rubbed off, and tlie next improvement 
was to make the beads hollow. The making of 
these beads is carried on even to this day in 
Venice. The beads are all blown separately. 
By means of a small tube the insides are 
delicately coated with a pearly liquid, and a 
wax coating is placed over that. It requires the 
scales of four thousand fishes to produce half a 
pint of the liquid, to which small quantities of 
sal ammonia and isinglass are afterwards 
added.” 

I tried my hand, or rather my mouth, at a 
little glass-blowing, and the result, which you 
see in the person of this scent bottle, is not a 
very dazzling success, if viewed merely as a 
development of design in high art. It may be 
explained that it was constructed to fit a parti¬ 
cular pocket which was to be allotted to its 
reception. When Henry III. of France visited 


122 


the glass houses of Murano in the year 1574, he 
was so delighted with what he saw that he is 
said to have ennobled all the workmen in a 
batch. The flasks, drinking cups, and glasses, 
were celebrated all over the civilized world. 
Besides the real beauty and purity of the Vene¬ 
tian crystal, it was supposed to possess a quality 
which was of inestimable value when the practice 
of poisoning was so horribly frequent. If a cup 
or glass was pure Venetian, it would fly into a 
million pieces, like a Rupert’s drop, if any 
noxious beverage were poured into it. Such a 
property in a drinking vessel would prove incon¬ 
venient at the present day, since decanters and 
tumblers so keenly sensitive to poison would be 
doomed to instant and utter annihilation upon 
contact with such pernicious beverages as 
Soyer’s nectar, and South African port. The 
latter of these preparations would seem, if 


123 


judged by the criterion of taste, to be a solution 
of lucifer matches in treacle and water. AVhat 
ingredients can possibly have been combined to 
form the u nectar ” is a riddle which eludes 
conjecture, however speculative. Its impression 
upon the palate may be described as that of 
“ spoilt vinegar with a sneeze in it.” For 
similar reasons the Venetian glass would of 
course be wholly unavailable as a vehicle of that 
inscrutable compound of deleterious fluid ele¬ 
ments known to the conventional language of 
ordinary dinner parties as u champagne.” 

From Venice the ferry across the top of the 
Adriatic to Trieste by steamer occupies only five 
or six hours, and the expedition is well worth 
making. It is almost unnecessary to mention 
that at the time of my voyage in September 
last, the boat, like every other mortal place just 
then where human beings could be stowed, was 


124 


crowded with Austrian soldiers, many ot them 
wounded. One handsome young officer among 
them appeared to he minus the calves of his 
legs. Another, to the great misfortune of the 
belles of Vienna, had also had his dancing days 
brought to a premature conclusion by a portion 
of one of his feet having been shot away. The 
fore part of the boat was filled with privates, 
woebegone, ragged, and wretched, to the last 
degree, and in respect of their physical and 
intellectual condition generally, in quite as low 
an abyss as anything one has read of Russian 
serfs. They lay listlessly about the deck, sleep¬ 
ing, or gazing at nothing with dull dreary eyes. 
As melancholy and spectral a cargo as Charon’s 
“ phantom ship ” was ever freighted with. 

Trieste is a very handsome, thriving, town. 
It might be twin-brother to Pesth the capital 
of Hungary, for it resembles it so much in 


125 


general appearance, and in several of its par¬ 
ticular features. It is probably the cleanest 
place in the world, not even excepting Broek in 
Holland. For the houses are as spotlessly 
white as Delarue’s note paper, and the streets 
are paved throughout with the most elaborate 
neatness. It seems to satisfy the terms of 
eulogistic admiration by which housemaids of 
imaginative impulses are wont to characterise 
the cleanness of their domains, when they 
asseverate that “you might eat your dinner off 
the floor anywhere.” There is probably no 
recorded instance of a householder having 
availed himself of the advantage thus brought 
within his reach through the assiduity of his 
maids, by a picnic on the drawing-room carpet. 
The satisfactorily pure condition of Trieste is 
partly attributable to the circumstance that the 
place is continually subjected to shower baths, 


126 


or more properly speaking, douche baths, of 
rain, which are incident to its geographical 
position. For the south wind bears against the 
flanks of the Carnic Alps, at the feet of which 
the city lies, currents of heated air charged with 
moisture from the Adriatic, which is rapidly 
condensed into torrents of rain such as are 
rarely seen out of the tropics. At Udine, for 
example, which is a few miles north of Trieste 
and closer to the mountains, the rain-guage has 
shown an annual fall of from sixty to over an 
hundred inches of rain, which of course must 
“rince out” the streets there pretty effectively. 
The wind at Trieste blows at times with terrific 
violence. If you are rash enough to venture 
out during a squall, there is much probability 
of your being caught up and whisked away like 
a deal shaving, without the slightest reference to 
any objections you may happen to entertain to the 


proceeding, and with no respect whatever for your 
personal dignity. And your friends may antici¬ 
pate your being eventually heard of at Venice or 
Vienna, as the case may he, according to the 
direction in which the hurricane may set. The 
inns at Trieste are famously good. The Hotel 
de la Ville on the Quay is one of the handsomest 
and best in Europe. To walk about Trieste on 
a summer day is the pursuit of lionizing under 
difficulties, since the power of the sun, multi¬ 
plied as it is by the intense reflection to which 
the character of the town and its environs gives 
the utmost effect, is indescribable. It is un¬ 
desirable for a stranger in a foreign city to be 
struck senseless by a coup de soleil, if it can be 
avoided, since it is likely that during the pro¬ 
gress of the transaction somebody or other may 
experience a touching gush of affection for his 
watch and purse. Trieste is Oriental enough in 


128 


its connections to number Greek among tlie 
Babel of languages which are spoken there. It 
was amusing to observe in a chemist’s window 
a very old acquaintance, but in a new dress, 
namely M ctxoccrag rov P ov\avSs 9 which is, being 
interpreted, Rowland’s Macassar. A slight in¬ 
accuracy, however, may be detected in the form 
of the name so familiar to English eyes, since 
it will be remarked that the Greek translator 
has rendered it “Rowland’s” and thus, as it 
might be said, thrown our illustrious countryman 
into a position of chronic genitive case. 

After surveying the town, it bethought me 
to wander along the seashore in search of 
Adriatic shells for a friend, but not a single 
one of any description was to be found. On 
turning inland in despair, a path led me to a 
great, yellow, gaudy, and ugly, church at the 
top of a hill, where service was going on. But 


129 


an agreeable surprise awaited me on entering. 
For the whole population, as it seemed to be, 
of the country side, assembled there, joined in 
the singing, making such a rich, rushing, tide of 
music as was truly impressive and sublime. 
The tableau was picturesque, all the women 
having their heads and whole busts enveloped 
in some linen contraption brilliantly white, 
and each of them wore two pair of earrings. 
The grande tenue of the men consisted in one 
earring, and in a piece of geranium stuck be¬ 
hind one ear. Some of the more dashing 
swells among them sported a sort of starry 
firmament of tin buttons, big enough to rank 
as young saucepan lids. 

The friars at Trieste, and in Lombardy gene¬ 
rally, moved my indignation. If any indolent 
rascal there doesn’t want to work, and isn’t 
nephew to some beneficent great dignitary of 

K 


130 


the law who will bestow upon him an office 
where the proportion which its duties bear to 
their attendant emoluments is of a very grati¬ 
fying character, he turns mendicant friar. 
Thenceforth “ he does nothing but beg, and 
bob in and out of a church, and cock up his 
hands as if praying,” and lives right royally 
on begging. The words marked as a quotation 
in the last sentence are a literal translation of 
the language used by a Venetian to me in des¬ 
canting on the magnitude of this evil. There 
is a considerable colony of these friars near 
Trieste. Immediately on my appearing in their 
vicinity, they began to jingle their money-boxes, 
and continued to do so in an increasingly pe¬ 
remptory manner, and in whatever direction I 
moved, a box was always sliding insinuatingly 
under my elbow. The poor country people put 
in their mites with a respectful bow. It moved 


131 


my indignation so much to see them defrauded 
of their miserable savings by such a set of 
pitiless and insatiable birds of prey, that when 
one of the tonsured harpies made a direct appeal 
to me, I was compelled to relieve my mind by 
growling emphatically “you wicked old thief!’* 
There was no rudeness in the observation, since 
he could not be supposed to understand English. 
Unhappily for Austria, the folly of its present 
Emperor is equalled only by his blind and 
bigoted subservience to the priesthood. Otherwise 
it would have been a very wholesome measure on 
his part to have taken the opportunity afforded 
by the late war of enrolling those rascally friars 
in one regiment, and opposing them on all 
occasions to the Zouaves. The bullets and 
cold steel of which they would then most un¬ 
doubtedly have got their fill, would have been a 

very proper alterative for them from the brawn 

k 2 


132 


and beer with which, to judge from their lumi¬ 
nously unctuous appearance, they must be in 
the habit of gorging themselves. 

Sailors being rendered by the nature of their 
occupation rough and reckless sort of fellows, 
are apt to denounce anything which may occur 
to put them out, in highly reprehensible impro¬ 
prieties of language. That this vice is rapidly 
on the wane in England is no inconsiderable 
national advantage. Now representatives of all 
nations, and of every language under the sun, 
meet at Trieste. So that after frequenting the 
port there for a short time, one would be in a 
position to bring 'out a polyglot edition of the 
Gommination Service, for one would be brought 
to an acquaintance, however unwillingly, with 
all the most forcible and effective formulas for 
blowing up each and every of the multitudinous 
varieties of the human race. 


133 


On returning through. Venice en route for 
Padua, it was necessary of course to put in an 
appearance at the passport office. The official 
who was presiding there had all his hair cropped 
down to about a quarter of an inch long, or 
more properly speaking, a quarter of an inch 
short, with the exception of a little tuft over his 
forehead, like the tassels which hang between the 
ears of cart horses, so that his head was about 
equally suggestive of a cocoanut and a clothes’ 
brush. It would seem from the remarkable ugli¬ 
ness which is a prevailing epidemic among Aus¬ 
trian functionaries, that this observable charac¬ 
teristic by which they are distinguished must 
have something to do with the principle of their 
selection. It may easily be conceived that a 
red-nosed man, with a certain peculiar caked 
appearance about his face indicative that he 
entertains no prejudices in favour of washing, 


134 


without hair or whiskers, and exhibiting about 
his throat irregular and ambiguous symptons of 
an amber-coloured fabric which may or may not 
have formerly been linen, doesn’t altogether 
look very ravishing! Dickens somewhere or 
other speaks of somebody who was gifted with 
a particularly unprepossessing expression as 
having a countenance which in itself was amply 
sufficient to justify his instant execution at any 
moment. Should any such system of criminal 
jurisprudence ever come to prevail at Venice, 
there is but scanty hope that the officer whom I 
have described could be preserved to his friends. 
It may also be mentioned, by the way, that 
these presiding genii of the passport offices are 
for some reason best known to themselves 
usually attired in a complete suit of seedy black 
cloth, and since, being Austrian subjects, their 
countenances are necessarily steeped in gloom, 


135 


the impression which the general effect of their 
appearance conveys to the observer is that of the 
ghosts of starved undertakers. It would he 
highly incorrect to suppose them to resemble 
living undertakers, who are notoriously the 
merriest fellows that exist, and distinguished 
from the rest of the community by their exceed¬ 
ing red noses and blossomy faces. To see a 
party of them on their return from a professional 
excursion to Kensal Green, sitting on the lid of 
a hearse, and in the enjoyment of great buoy¬ 
ancy and exuberance of animal spirits, is quite 
a genial thing to contemplate. 

Padua is the queerest, quaintest, curiousest, 
most unaccountable, ramshackly old ghost of 
a place that there can be upon earth. Fancy 
miles of grass-grown streets of houses mostly 
uninhabited, with here and there delicious little 
bits of trim garden, with fanciful quotations 


136 


from Virgil on the gates, and paths through 
interlacing vines by rapid streams, and miles 
upon miles of dim old arcades, with one or two 
mosque-like churches (here are pictures of them), 
in which are some of the most sumptuous 
shrines in Christendom, and a variety of build¬ 
ings of uncouth aspect, such as can only have 
been designed by an insane architect after a pork 
supper. (Here is a picture of what is called 
the Town House.) And a huge dreamy old inn 
like the ghost of a mediaeval barrack, full of 
archaic portraits, and pictures, and coats of 
arms, and medallions, and fantastic oddments, 
where, except for the mosquitoes, I was all alone. 
The landlord, a magnificent old gentleman 
with the stateliness of a Louis Quatorze 
tempered with the graceful courtesy of a 
Chesterfield, was quite aghast at my arrival. 
He said that no strangers had come there since 


137 


the war, and that no meat, or wine, or spirits, 
were to be had. However, I was enchanted with 
the whole thing in general, and with mine host 
in particular, and he, finding me resolutely 
determined to be pleased with anything and 
everything, became paternally affectionate forth¬ 
with. He produced his own private and che¬ 
rished bottle of rum for my especial refreshment 
and gratification, and much I smacked my lips 
over the same in token of lively relish, and 
excessively nasty I thought it. In the event of 
living a little longer, it is my intention to 
return to the dear old Aquila d’Oro at Padua, 
and stay a month there, taking nothing but 
certain books, with a cwt. of tea and a tin of 
biscuits to set the landlord’s mind at ease about 
the commissariat, and a stack of writing paper, 
and if the last article doesn’t turn into a novel 
under such inspiring circumstances, I must be 


138 


pronounced to have as little imaginative genius 
as a cold potatoe. The only drawback to one’s 
enjoyment at Padua is the mosquitoes, who are 
aggravating enough to drive a quakeress into 
vituperative improprieties. They came in 
through a crack in the window which had es¬ 
caped my observation, and stung me in the 
hollows of my heels to an extent which brought 
me to the verge of distraction. And one of 
them, who seemed to be gifted with a portentous 
appetite, resorted to my eye for her supper. 
It is correct to say “her” supper, since the 
mosquitoes which sting, are, as might be 
expected from a certain analogy which it is 
unnecessary to particularise more explicitly, of 
the feminine gender only. 

Mine host spoke with indignation and impa¬ 
tience of being obliged to entertain a certain 
number of Austrian officers who were con- 


139 


tinually billeted upon him. The same grievance 
exists in every town in Venetia, and a very 
serious one it is to the hotel keepers. For a 
miserably insufficient and shabby sum is allowed 
by the Government for these unwelcome guests, 
and this, too, has to be paid by the commune or 
district. But were it ever so large, the personal 
habits of Austrian officers are so disgracefully 
filthy, that it would be difficult to give any 
adequate compensation in money for the annoy¬ 
ance which they cause in a household. To travel 
with them is bad enough, addicted as they are 
to shag tobacco and lavish expectoration. And 
it is a stern trial to one’s nervous susceptibilities 
when they pull out from somewhere about their 
persons long red sausages nearly as big, seriously 
speaking, as umbrella cases, and looking like 
gigantic worms, or the sandbags used to stop 
draughts in windows, and proceed to indulge 


140 


themselves in the gratification of nibbling 
thereat. 

It would seem Gothic to appear by abstaining 
from any mention of the famous Giottos at 
Padua to be ignorant of their existence. Such 
is not my case, but with only twenty-four hours 
to spend in so large, so interesting, so historical, 
and so picturesque a city as Padua, it would not 
have been by any means a u spirited policy ” 
to have spent the time on any works of art 
whatever. 

I never shall think without laughing of the 
Padua omnibus, which in point of size w r as quite 
a Noah’s ark, and drawn by horses with legs as 
thick as if they had been those of gouty hippopo¬ 
tamuses. In the broad streets it wambled about in 
as desultory and vacillating a process of pro¬ 
gression as was that of Mrs. Gamp after her “ tea,” 
butting its head at the houses from side to side as 


141 


if the pillars of the arcades had been ninepins 
which it was bent upon knocking down. And in 
the small streets, where its excursive impulses 
had to he controlled by steady driving, its getting 
through them at all was such a close shave that 
had it ventured into any one a shade narrower, 
it must have fitted it tight like a long plug. 
And the unwieldy gambols in which it indulged 
when it got among holes in the paving, plung¬ 
ing about with its bows down in the ground, 
and throwing up its stern behind in a grossly 
indecorous fashion, and then abruptly reversing 
this arrangement, were somewhat disconcerting 
to its passengers. 

St. Anthony is held in the greatest veneration 
at Padua, and representations of him, in the 
form of statues and dolls, and pictures like this, 
are so numerous as to form the staple of the 
commercial activity of the place. A life of him 


142 


is sold, containing an account of a sermon 
which he is stated to have preached to an 
assembly of fish. The introduction to this very 
queer address is as follows. I translate it liter¬ 
ally, omitting only a few words which are better 
unspoken on this occasion. “ When the heretics 
would not regard his preaching, he betook 
himself to the seashore, where the river Marec- 
cia disembogues itself into the Adriatic. He 
here called the fish together that they might 
hear his holy words. The fish came swimming 
towards him in such vast shoals both from the 
sea and from the river, that the surface of the 
water was quite covered with their multitudes. 
They quickly ranged themselves, according to 
their several species, into a very beautiful con¬ 
gregation, and like so many rational creatures, 
presented themselves before him to listen. St. 
Antonio was so struck with the miraculous 


143 


obedience and submission of these poor animals, 
that he found a secret sweetness distilling upon 
his soul, and at last addressed. himself to them 
in the following words.” His sermon is too long 
to quote, and its impressiveness would be 
deplorably weakened by my delivery of it. 
Without committing the offence of making 
anything really connected with religion the 
subject of entertainment, we may very inno¬ 
cently laugh at the picture which the legend 
presents to us of devout sprats, and of a u revi¬ 
val ” like those which have been making such a 
stir, extending itself to Adriatic lobsters. And 
one cannot help remarking that the feeling 
which the saint is described to have enjoyed of 
“ a secret sweetness distilling upon his soul ” 
sounds excessively pleasant and comfortable! 

From Padua back to Verona, and thence to 
Mantua, of which this is a picture. The rail- 


144 


way connecting the two latter towns passes 
Villafranca, a village about the size of Arding- 
lye. The place probably scarcely knew that it 
was thought worth christening at all, till on 
waking up one fine morning in the course of 
last summer, it was surprised to find that it 
had not only a name, but a very big one indeed, 
which was to mean a great deal, and which was 
to continue for a long time to come to spoil the 
appetite of every Italian in whose hearing it 
should be mentioned. If an invasion of this 
country should ever take place via Brighton, 
this Cuckfield ridge will offer an advantageous 
line for the English forces to occupy, cor¬ 
responding in some respects to that afforded by 
the Solferino heights in the defence of Venetia. 
In that case, a conspicuous house near a mill 
which crowns the apex of the heights here, will 
hold an analogous position to that of the tower 


145 


of Solferino, while Ardinglye, a little off to the 
east, will, like Villafranca, he the scene of the 
treaty ensuing upon the battle. Of course 
nobody can doubt for an instant that the 
French would find themselves in a widely 
different condition, after a course of manipula¬ 
tion at the hands of Sussex militia and 
volunteers, from what was the case when they 
had only to deal with starved and jaded 
Austrians. We should, no doubt, to use a 
vulgar, but very satisfactory, metaphor, “ tickle 
their tails for them pretty handsomely.” The 
only danger is lest our whole front ranks 
should be swept away by a storm of bullets 
from behind, emanating from the misdirected 
energies of the gallant and patriotic volunteers 
in the rear. 

All the fortifications at Mantua, at the time 
of my visit, were in applepie order for the 

L 


146 


reception of unbidden visitors, for when the 
armistice of Villafranca was made, the French 
were only three quarters of an hour’s march 
from the place. Mantua is the strongest 
fortress in Italy, and the very nucleus of 
Austrian jealousy and tiresomeness. At this 
time, too, it was in a state of siege, which 
didn’t make things pleasanter for travellers. My 
passport, which had been obliged to be specially 
vise for Mantua, was taken from me at the outer 
gates, and it was necessary to apply for it 
some hours afterwards at the police office, 
and then get it countersigned by a major of the 
Austrian garrison at another office. I walked 
out on the bridge of San Giorgio which is 
within the fortifications, merely to get a view 
of the town, since they will not let you go up 
on any tower, and on returning the same way 
five minutes afterwards, my passport was 


147 


demanded. This seemed so absurd that it 

moved me to remark to the officer in a queer 

compound of French and Italian, “ If you intend 

a joke, allow me to observe that it’s rather a 

weak one.” Of course any traveller who isn’t an 

absolute fool takes care to keep his passport strictly 

en regie, but a danger must always exist that they 

may possibly make mistakes, and that one may 

thus get subjected to annoyance and delay. For 

example, this very morning, on taking my 

usual precaution of glancing at what the police 

functionary wrote about me, it was puzzling 

enough to conjecture what his ugly hieroglyphics 

could possibly mean, till it struck me that they 

were intended for “ Frederick,” which he took for 

my name, the passport being headed “We, 

Frederick Earl of Clarendon,” &c., &c. Any 

less careful traveller might, at such a place 

as Mantua, have had a world of trouble from 

l 2 


148 


a trifling error like this, and yet this official was 
not a whit more of an imbecile blockhead than 
many of his compeers. For instance, the post¬ 
master at Verona gave me a letter addressed 
to u General Waters”, and could hardly be 
persuaded that it wasn’t right. He held in his 
hand all the time my passport, one’s necessary 
credentials at a poste restante, with the 
owner’s name printed very clearly on the out¬ 
side. But the perverse ingenuity which some 
people exert in making mistakes eludes all the 
precautions which can be taken to prevent them. 
So my friend baffled me by the artful device of 
considering William as the surname, and wholly 
declining to admit that any difference in English 
names begining with a W was perceptible. 
Nothing could be clearer therefore than that 
my unmilitary self was General Waters, and 
had the Duke of Wellington been pursuing the 


149 


same route, the postmaster would of course 
have conferred upon me the honor of an 
absolute identity with his Grace also. The 
knowledge that u Signor Guglielmo” was one 
of my aliases, helped me to the frequent detection 
of letters, &c., in letter G departments. 

Some years ago, when paddling about at 
Killarney, I read Orsini’s account of his escape 
from prison at Mantua, and thereupon made a 
stedfast resolution to go and examine the spot 
where so accomplished a piece of Jack Sheppard- 
ism was executed. That intention was now ful¬ 
filled. The interest, however, of the story is much 
weakened by a visit to the scene of action, 
because the opinion of the best informed 
q>eople there is found to be that his gaoler was 
bribed, and that he came quietly enough down 
stairs, passed the day in the reeds of the Mincio, 
and at night made off to a little village about 


150 


two miles from the bridge of San Giorgio, 
where a carriage and horses had been for a 
long time kept in constant readiness to hurry 
him away. This is, in all probability, the true 
history of the matter, and the published ac¬ 
count is simply fiction, written for a purpose 
which it is easy enough to discern. So 
also seem to have thought the Austrians, since 
they condemned the gaoler to twelve years’ 
imprisonment. The little village referred to, 
and which is a conspicuous object from the 
bridge of San Giorgio, is classic ground, as the 
scene where Rigoletto is laid. 

The Mincio is full of fish, and there were - 
a variety of water-birds disporting themselves 
about its banks and shallows ; among others, 
an exceedingly elegant kind of tern, which was 
new to me. There was also quite a grand exhi¬ 
bition of waterlilies of kinds unknown to 


151 


English waters. I sighed for some roots of 

•Hf 

them so ardently as to have been all but tempted 
to run the gauntlet of the sentinels’ bullets 
which would have attended the attempt to get 
them. For you mustn’t do any thing whatever 
at Mantua. The Austrians merely allow you, 
and that grudgingly enough, the hare right of 
existing in a dull and slavish manner, if you 
are tame enough to endure it. But between 
the noxious exhalations from the Mincio swamp, 
and the miasma of the political atmosphere, 
it must be rather a tough job for the Mantuans 
to contrive u to make a live of it” at all, as we 
sav in Sussex. 

V 

Mantua is a burning fiery furnace in summer. 
The following entry occurs in my journal. “ Sun 
so hot that I was compelled to muffle up my 
head and face in a handkerchief as Turkish 
ladies do. Not by any means, however, out of re- 


152 


gard for my complexion, which is happily unsus- 
ceptihleof deterioration, since it already resembles 
a stiff solution of Spanish liquorice in Thames 
water.” It was very afflicting to he surrounded on 
all sides by cool, clear, streams, and to be forbidden 
to bathe. It must be conceded, however, in some 
extenuation of the inhumanity of the authorities 
in this respect, that they were unconscious of the 
absolute cruelty of the prohibition. For the 
advantages resulting from the application of cold 
water to the person are of a nature which, as Ger¬ 
mans, they have, of course, wholly failed to realize. 
We are not, you know, to have any history 
this evening, so I forbear to tell you what great 
swells the Dukes of Mantua were in old times, 
or to speak of the one name which can never 
be absent from the mind of a classical scholar 
while he breathes the air of the place where the 
author of the “ Georgies” was born. But it 


153 


may be said u to persons about to marry,” before 
you furnish your drawing-room take a trip to 
Mantua (it will be well worth your while), and 
you will see in the Ducal Palace there what 
chandeliers ought to be, but what they clearly 
are not, anywhere else. 

In the shops at Mantua might be observed a 
print of a fat and vulgar-looking party in a 
black velvet coat and silk tights, pourtrayed in 

the act of declaiming u Essere, o non essere,” 
so it may be presumed that there is a provincial 
star in that theatrical hemisphere who is in the 
habit of u doing” Hamlet. It would probably 
be amusing to see, except that the Frenchman’s 
u Toby, or not Toby, dat is de ke-ves-te-ong,” 
could hardly be equalled in comicality. Which 
reminds me of a fact which is sufficiently hu¬ 
miliating to the English stage, namely, that 
perhaps the best Macbeth who has been seen on 


154 


the London boards of late years was an Italian 
whose duty was merely to play up to Ristori’s 
Lady Macbeth. In my opinion indeed, if he 
had not given the character too much of a 
certain Italian suppleness which would have 
been incompatible with the mental or physical 
anatomy of a Scotch chieftain, his impersonation 
would have saved itself triumphantly enough 
from the charge which is only but too well 
founded in ordinary representations of the part, 
of leaving everything to be desired. 

It may be remarked in conclusion with re¬ 
ference to Mantua, that its broad natural 
features as they exist at this moment are as 
accurately touched off by Virgil as they are by 
the latest edition of Murray. 

Before leaving Verona for Sardinia, it was 
necessary of course to pay a parting visit to the 
passport office. The room was crowded, and 


155 


there seemed but scanty hope of getting at¬ 
tended to for an hour to come, till the chief 
official, who was writing, happened to look up, 
and I recognised in him the person who had 
done me that good turn about the carriage at 
Peschiera. The involuntary exclamation on my 
part of “Ah! mon bienfaiteur de Peschiera!” 
attracted his attention, and he gave me a cordial 
welcome, satisfying all my little wants in a 
moment, a whole room-full before my proper 
turn, and dismissed me quite in a genial glow 
of amiability and satisfaction. He must have 
been bom in Italy, and pressed against his will 
into the Austrian service. It was quite a 
satisfaction to get out of the Austrian pro¬ 
vinces, and the ever-present sense of the dreary 
and sullen tyranny which oppresses them like a 
leaden nightmare, if such an animal be known 
to zoologists. The only principles known to 


156 


tlie Imperial rule are selfishness and violence. 
Austria produces no great men. In default of 
anything better, she ought at least to have a 
decently good army. But the officers are all 
swagger and inefficiency, and the common 
soldiers are rendered almost incapable of fighting 
through the mismanagement which prevails in 
the supply of necessaries. Incapable, that is, 
of fighting, even if they wished it, which in 
such a service of course they don’t. And the 
dogged, unintelligent, courage which they un¬ 
questionably possess will not enable them to 
withstand the dashing onslaught and im¬ 
petuosity of the Zouaves. That an empire in 
such a condition of apparent collapse can 
continue to exist for any long time seems 
happily impossible. 

After denouncing the Austrian rule as one of the 
most insupportable evils which afflicts humanity, 


157 


it is perhaps imprudent to speak in the next 
sentence of the passport system, lest one should 
incur the imputation of having allowed one’s 
views of a great empire in its really material 
aspects to receive a colouring from the petty 
annoyances which beset a traveller there. There 
is not a shadow of foundation for any such 
charge in my case. But it may he confessed 
that the sedulous attention which the Imperial 
Government pays to the minutest affairs of 
everybody who comes within its reach, is not by 
any means gratifying to the objects of such 
solicitude. In places like Mantua you seem to 
be asked for an account of yourself about every 
ten minutes, and it would not be at all sur¬ 
prising to find oneself in difficulties for having 
sneezed without having one’s passport properly 
vise for that purpose. I made the very natural 
inquiry of an Austrian official there whether 


158 


they asked the swallows for their passports on 
their arrival in the spring, but no answer was 
vouchsafed to me on the point. These incessant 
orders to “stand and deliver” your credentials 
become tiresome at last. At the time of my 
visit however, as has been already mentioned, 
Mantua was in a state of siege. One breathes 
more freely on finding oneself again on Sardi¬ 
nian soil, where mean and irritating jealousy and 
inquisitiveness are unknown, passports exist not, 
and where you may be John Bright, or Kossuth, 
or Drs. Smethurst, or Cumming, or any other 
objectionable character, without molestation, 
provided you behave yourself.* 

* “ The extreme limit of toleration seems to be reached in 
England, where so low and mischievous a caitiff as the Editor 
of The Record newspaper must be, is allowed to pass unchas- 
ti.sed. The cool insolence with which he publishes and censures 
the doings of private families for the sake of injuring those who 
to their infinite credit and happiness are opposed to the preten¬ 
sions of “ The truly pious ” (in The Record point of view), is such 
as could only be met by expostulation of a local character. 
Take, as chance examples of this sort of thing, the two last 
numbers of that publication, those, namely for January 30, and 
February 1, 1860. 


My return from Verona to Milan happened to 
be on the eighth of September, which is the fete 
of the Virgin, and a grand festival throughout 
Italy. The railway near the stations was 
fringed with crowds of country people who 
squauked and howled at the top of their lungs 
when the train came in, and when it moved away. 
My ingenuity proved unequal to the task of 
detecting wherein the secret lay of the high gra¬ 
tification which this pastime evidently afforded 
to them. Perhaps one gets too much blase 
with the feverish and excited forms of pleasure 
which are incident to metropolitan life to have 
any taste left for the innocent and simple 
enjoyment of howling at nothing. 

A visit to Milan on the eighth of September 
is much to be recommended, particularly if the 
date should happen to follow closely upon the 
termination of a series of military triumphs. 


160 


On this occasion every individual house in the 
whole city, and every window of it, was prettily 
illuminated. There were lamps, and candles, 
and flags, and transparencies, and mottoes, 
without end. The streets were crowded, quite 
plethorically so, with people in a high state of 
jollity. And bands of men paraded about, 
singing patriotic songs with tremendous energy. 
But the grand spectacle of all was the Cathe¬ 
dral, illuminated up to its very highest point hv 
lights placed behind the pinnacles, which gave 
it the undefined splendour of a palace of 
enchantment. And the statue, whoever it may 
represent, which stands on the tip top of the 
spire, was made to brandish for the nonce the 
Sardinian flag. Eveiy hotel was crammed full 
from the attic to the cellar. Some fellow tra¬ 
vellers and myself drove to all the inns in 
succession, till my state of exhaustion was so 

/ V 


161 


great as to suggest the anticipation that my 
earthly pilgrimage was destined to close in that 
Milan omnibus. Such was our desperation, that 
we were reduced to beg to be taken in (it would 
indeed have been u taken in and done for ”) at 
a sinister looking little public house called 
“ The Three Jews ” in some dreadful slum or 
other. But they would not have us even there. 
Having an acquaintance at Milan, I was com¬ 
pelled to make an unseasonable call upon him, 
for it was now midnight, to beg his assistance. 
He sent me with a servant and a recommendation 
to the funniest little out-of-the-way inn in the 
world, quite as difficult to find as Todgers’, or 
the North-West Passage, and rejoicing in a 
name which means, being translated from the 
Italian, “ The Little Hen Sparrow.” There they 
contrived a refuge for me for the night. It 

proved a comfortable little place enough, with 

M 


162 


the single drawback of the dirt of the coffee 
room, which was so deep that any cleaning 
thereof must have assumed the character of a 
process of excavation. 

From Milan for a couple of days to Como, 
but the entrancing beauties of that lovely lake 
are not such as could be made the matter of 
amusing description for you. It may be 
mentioned however for the benefit of any of 
you who are fond of flowers, and who may 
happen to go there, that you will find among 
the woods with which the banks are clothed a 
dark lilac cyclamen so sweet that—well—to do 
justice in words to the fragrance of a flower 
seems to be as impracticable as the proverbial 
impossibility of describing the taste of cham¬ 
pagne. Perhaps one might say in both cases 
a intoxicatingly sweet.” 

Never omit in a foreign town to visit some 


163 


one of the burying grounds attached to it. You 

will find that the character and genius of any 

people is vividly illustrated by the style of their 

sepulchral monuments and inscriptions. There 

is a large cemetery on one of the heights above 

Como. The ascent to it is rendered unpleasant 

by several of those disgraceful and obscene 

exhibitions, so common in Germany, of chapels 

full of skulls and bones of people who died in 

some plague. The skulls of the priests are 

distinguished by the mouldering remains of 

their clerical hats, which gives them a grim, 

and at the same time a grotesque, effect. The 

last new grave in the cemetery was that of a 

son of Garibaldi’s who was killed near Como in 

the late war. The name, displayed in a shrine 

of laurels and Sardinian flags, was in itself a 

sufficiently eloquent funeral oration. Sentiment 

of any kind cannot fail to acquire a new or 

m 2 


164 


increased beauty when the melodious Italian 
language becomes the vehicle of its expression. 
Independently of the advantage which the 
epitaphs at the Como cemetery thus possessed, 
as compared with English ones, they were 
in much better taste than the extravagant and 
fulsome praises of the departed which prevail 
upon so many of the tombstones in our burying 
grounds. The most favourite epitaph in our 
country churchyards, about the deceased being 
now walking on Canaan’s happy shore, and the 
rest of it—you all know its terms, is of course 
open to one obvious and strong objection among 
others, namely, that it assumes to speak in a 
tone of presumptuous assurance of what cannot 
possibly be said with absolute certainty by any 
one human being of any other. The three em¬ 
blematical tears graven in stone to which the 
French are so partial, were not to be seen on' 


165 


these Como monuments. They always seem to 
me to be an unfortunate form of emblem of 
grief, since when they are of the long- straight 
kind they are so apt to remind one of the 
streamers which descend when a rocket has 
burst, while if the curly pattern is adopted, 
they are but too inevitably suggestive of tad¬ 
poles in a state of active wriggle. An epitaph 
of a few words only, upon some young girl, 
struck me as pretty. It w r as 

“Al fiore di bellezza e di virtd.” 


I shall not translate that for you, since it is 
unfair to anything in the nature of sentiment 
to put it into a foreign dress, and most especi¬ 
ally would it be so when the change would have 
to be from Italian to English. It occurred to 
me that this epitaph would form a good in¬ 
scription for an offering, such as a ring or the 


166 


like, given by a lover to the object of bis 
affections, since he, no doubt, would consider its 
terms to be applicable to her case, whatever 
opinion might be entertained by other people 
upon the point. 

You must now, if you please, take a seven- 
league-boots’ stride to Alessandria (here, on the 
map) which was lately so familiar a name as 
being the second in importance of the Sardinian 
fortresses. The town is surrounded by an 
earthen rampart of so great an extent that it 
would take a large army to defend it. There 
are not more than two guns to every quarter of 
a mile of bank. The citadel, which is not very 
extensive, but strong, is on the opposite bank 
of the river Tanaro. Three or four hours of rail¬ 
way take you from Alessandria to Genoa (here, 
on the map) and it is a happy journey to make, 


167 


for the former place is a miserable beast of a 
town, while the latter is a paradise. 

Genoa lies at the feet of the Ligurian Apen¬ 
nines, which run up into sharp irregular peaks 
behind and above it. Each of these is crowned 
by its own separate fort. Behind these succeed a 

9 

series of similar, but higher, peaks, extending 
for some miles inland. The belt of fortifications 
has a circuit of about seven miles. Since each of 
these forts is a perfectly independent stronghold 
in itself, and it is also incapable of being 
battered or stormed, a hostile advance upon 
Genoa from the land side would be a formidable 
undertaking, while supposing an enemy to have 
gained possession of the place from the sea, the 
plunging fire of shot and shell which would 
plump upon him from the heights on all sides, 
would render the town and harbour much 
too hot to hold him. 


168 


Genoa is one of the most beautiful cities of 
the world, both in point of building* and situa¬ 
tion. These views will give you a more vivid 
notion of its appearance than could be gathered 
from any verbal description, though a few words 
of the poet Gray may be quoted on the subject. 
He says u Figure to yourself avast semi-circular 
basin full of tine blue sea and vessels of all 
sorts and sizes, some sailing oiit, some coming 
in, and others at anchor; and all around, palaces 
and churches peeping over one another’s heads, 
gardens and marble terraces full of orange and 
cypress trees, fountains, and trellis-work covered 
with vines.” Genoa is like Bath, and human 
life, all ups and downs, and the pavement of 
the streets is particularly slippery. Consequently, 
except in a few streets which run horizontally 
along the side of the hill, horses can scarcely 
be used. The mules which are substituted for 


169 


them as beasts of burden are provided with 
leather boots to give them a better foothold, 
and in these they contrive to scuffle up and 
down without breaking their noses. 

You know perhaps that Genoa, in common 
with Malta and Calcutta, has a speciality for the 
manufacture of filigree ornaments. Here are 
some specimens of the work. The material of 
which they are composed is silver, but as that is 
so apt to tarnish, it is usually gilt. The trade in 
marionettes seems also to be brisk. The most 
desirable mementos to carry away from any 
place which one visits are of course whatever 
productions may happen to be peculiar to the 
locality. So that a traveller of any gumption 
will give but a contemptuous glance at the refuse 
trinkets from the Palais Royal which are dis¬ 
played in the Rue des Orfevres, and lavish his 
substance on filigree and marionettes. A lady 


170 


at the table d’hote at our hotel asked me one 
day how I had spent my morning. u Wrote 
letters, and then went shopping.” “ What did 
you buy?” u Half a pint of jewellery, and 
nine and thirty dolls.” She laughed, but it was 
literally true. The dolls however were the more 
triumphantly successful investment. The French 
and English custom-house officers did certainlv 
appear to consider that the contents of my port¬ 
manteau embraced some rather unusual elements. 

I shall say nothing more about Genoa, partly 
because it is so admirably described in a little 
illustrated history of the place which is in this 
room, as well as in Dickens’ u Pictures from 
Italy,” without which this library could not 
properly consider itself a library at all, but also 
for another reason, namely, that I hope to give 
the subject of Genoa a lecture all to itself on 
some future occasion. 


171 


If you have a taste for getting into difficulties 
at sea, allow me to recommend to you a trip by 
a mercantile screw steamer from Genoa to 
Marseilles. The passage however is somewhat 
tediously long, unless there happens to he some¬ 
body or something on hoard to manufacture fun 
out of. My first voyage, some years ago, was 
by a boat loaded with liay up to half the height 
of the funnel. My fellow passengers were a 
Russian lady and her servants, some American 
sailors, and a number of rough fellows from 
Leghorn with skins like chesnuts or very old 
mahogany, and in very inadequate costume— 
about as much as men are obliged to wear at 
watering places to bathe in. They looked ex¬ 
tremely like models of Italian sailors done in 
terra-cotta. These gentry lay in a state of what 
some author or other calls “ slumb’rous inert¬ 
ness ” on the hay, their possession of any vital 



172 


energies whatever being betrayed only by the 
assiduity with which they smoked short clay 
pipes. So that Lord Dundonald’s achievement 
of steering a ship loaded with combustibles into 
a hostile port was a tame and common-place pro¬ 
ceeding as compared with the risk which we, 
with our hay, ran from a stray spark from the 
funnel, or the Livornians’ pipes. The Russian 
lady, when we got into rough water, began to 
look very sorry for herself, and well she might, 
if a complexion to the last degree unwholesome 
may be viewed as a legitimate subject of regret. 
She subsequently passed through all the stages of 
verdure from that of an opening primrose to a laurel 
leaf, and her descending gradations of mental 
anguish appeared to correspond with remarkable 
precision to the darkening hues of her com¬ 
plexion. Her deepening groans, too, preserved 
a due consonance of degree with these vicissi- 


tudes. I was called upon, as the only inter¬ 
preter on board, to arbitrate between the Yankee 
sailors and the steward, who was alleged by 
them to have charged some exorbitant price for 
every “male o’ groob.” To appraise the value 
of the dishes supplied involved an inspection of 
their remains, which was as repulsive a duty as 
“ viewing the body” at a coroner’s inquest. For 
the delicacies in question were of that “strong” 
description in which nautical taste is so addicted 
to revel, such as, for example, rich combinations 
of red herring and fat bacon set afloat in a fluid 
of a very pronounced oleaginous character. The 
gratitude of the Yankees for “ taxing their 
costs” found expression in cordial invitations to 
me to “bakker” and “licker” with them. Rum 
and quids however had to be declined, since 
what with the tumbling of the vessel in a head 
sea, and the vibration of the screw, elaborate 


174 


circumspection was rendered necessary to avoid 
getting started on a course of indisposition 
which it might have been very difficult to arrest. 
We arrived at Marseilles a day or two overdue, 
and then the captain being absorbed in galli- 
vantation with some Genoese beauty who had 
been confided to his protection, inadvertently 
went ashore with our passports in his pocket, in 
consequence of which we were not allowed to 
leave the ship for ever so long. So if anathemas 
ever take effect, that functionary must have 
gone to the extremely had. A sort of literary 
bouquet might have been gathered on the 
occasion comprising all the choicest flowers of 
invective which may be culled from the French, 
Italian, Russian, and English, dictionaries, the 
whole being hound together with a tasty collec¬ 
tion of Yankee expletives of remarkable force 
and vigour. Such was my first voyage from 


175 


Genoa to Marseilles. If you can contrive to 
keep awake two minutes longer, you shall hear 
about my second trip. 

We set sail in the middle of the day on a 
Wednesday in a French mercantile screw stea¬ 
mer. It was so u crank,” that is, inclined to 
tip, that the motion was enough to make one 
giddy while she was still at her moorings in the 
snuggest recess in the harbour, and before we 
were half a dozen miles from the port it was all 
one could possibly do to hold on by the gunwale. 
It has been my fortune to sail in queer boats 
enough goodness knows ! English, French, Bel¬ 
gian, Austrian, and Dutch, and in all sorts of 
weathers, and some of them did unquestionably 
achieve some remarkably odd antics ! In parti¬ 
cular there was a Dutch institution which used 
to ply between London and Rotterdam which 
was given to plunge about in heavy seas as a 


17G 


drunken whale might be conceived to do. It is 
proper to speak of it as u an institution,” since 
it would he a misnomer to call such a structure 
a boat. It was the shape of a soap dish, and 
much about as fat and plethoric as Primrose 
Hill. It possessed an interest of its own, when 
contemplated in an archaeological point of view, 
as an example of the comical productions of the 
early ages of shipbuilding. But none of the 
gymnastics ever achieved by that most perni¬ 
cious of old tubs, to the signal discomfiture and 
conflabbergastation of its unlucky passengers, 
can be named in comparison with the aston¬ 
ishing escapades of this Mediterranean screw. 
It seemed to stand alternately on stem and 
stern, and kept rolling over on its beam ends first 
on one side then on the other with such rapidity 
and violence that it was difficult to avoid being 
shot overboard. If it had turned a summerset in 


1 

1 / / 


tlie air and come down on its keel again, it would 

not have been in the least surprising! This 

extravagance of behaviour was sustained in a 

greater or less degree till Friday at midnight, 

just thirty-five hours, when we exchanged these 

rough vagaries for a mild seesaw in the Joliette 

harbour at Marseilles, till they let us disembark 

at six the next morning. It only amused and 

appetized me, but the other passengers were 

more dead than alive all the time. These were 

principally Italians of the humblest class, who 

lay flat on the deck in such a state of abject 

filth and misery as was hideous to see and is 

impossible to describe. In the language of the 

article on predestination u in the wretchlessness 

of extreme desperation.” It blew so violently, 

and our steam power was so weak, that it seemed 

several times likely that we should be forced 

into what an Irishman would have called “ pro- 

N 


178 


greasing backwards ” towards Genoa. The 
unspeakable dirt and disorder which are encoun¬ 
tered on board some foreign mercantile vessels 
are not to be conceived by those who have only 
sailed by English ships. I employed an hour or 
two of comparative calm when we were under 
the shelter of the headlands off Toulon, in 
giving an Italian an English lesson out of u As 
you like it.” He, as other foreigners have done 
before under corresponding circumstances, asked 
me how to pronounce “ Walter Scott ” and 
“ The Archbishop of Canterbury,” and what is 

the precise signification of “ G-d-.“ 

For the sake of our national credit I always tell 
them that the last named formula of expression 
is an interjectional benediction of peculiar 
fervency, so it is to be hoped my pupils won’t 
adopt that particular mode of conveying their 
acknowledgments to anv English benefactors to 




179 


whom they may wish to make a graceful expres¬ 
sion of their sense of the magnitude of obliga¬ 
tions conferred upon them! My hat got thoroughly 
saturated with sea water from the constant swosh 
of spray, and consequently, when it got dry, 
became so hard, and brown, and salt, and shiny, 
that it would have cut up into very tolerable red 
herrings. 

It only remains to show you a few more 
u oddments ” which turned up on the unpack¬ 
ing of my pormanteau on getting home. 
These. Some Austrian pieces of copper so 
infinitesimally small in value that one might 
almost conceive a Scotchman being led to give 
one away in charity. A portrait of the King of 
Sardinia, and his pedigree, showing his con¬ 
nexion with the royal house of England. He 

seems, as far as I can make out, to be somewhere 
about hundredth cousin ever so many times 


180 


removed, to our Queen. But any connexion, 
however faint and shadowy, with so admirable a 
lady as that, is a thing to he made out if possible, 
and to be proud of. The most prominent feature 
in the portraits of Victor Emmanuel is his 
prodigious moustache, of which the British 
public is kept in lively remembrance by that 
hairdresser’s everlasting advertisement of his 
“ Sardinian pommade,” accompanied as it is 
with a pictorial illustration of the results of the 
preparation in question as they are to be observed 
in his majesty. If all the marvellous things 
were true that advertising barbers say of their 
specifics for eliciting and coaxing hair out of 
places where it had previously formed no inten¬ 
tion of coming up, the conversion of a wooden 
peg into a shaving brush by anointing one end 
of it with a dab of Macassar oil would be a very 
sunple matter. This is a likeness of the Princess 


181 


Clotilde of Sardinia wlio married Prince Napo¬ 
leon last spring. Unless her portraits misre¬ 
present her, she must have an uncomfortable 
expression as if something had disagreed with 
her. Since her marriage, if report he true, some¬ 
thing has indeed done so in a deplorable man¬ 
ner. These dolls give accurate facsimiles of 
the uniforms of a French soldier of the line, 
Zouave, and Grenadier, respectively. The Turcos 
are dressed just like the Zouaves, except that they 
have blue petticoats instead of red. Here is an 
Austrian private in the familiar white and blue 
uniform. Many regiments are attired in sky- 
blue inexpressibles of such agonizing tightness 
that to say merely that these pantaloons fit the 
wearer like his skin is to convey but a weak 
and inadequate notion of the closeness of the 
hug which they give him. They make his legs 
look as squeezed-up and hard as if they were 


182 


wooden legs painted blue, or as if he had 
borrowed a pair from a blue washing stand or 
some other article of furniture. He must either 
be born in them, or else put them on once for 
all at some early period of his history, since the 
idea of attempting the enterprise of getting 
into such things, or of getting them off without 
a surgical operation, would be a wild and 
chimerical absurdity. 

Paris on my return to it looked like the stage 
of a theatre after a transformation scene, as it 
was full of pantomime properties in the way of 
gilt angels and the like, put up for the occasion 
of the marching in of u the army of Italy.” 

The old letters of which this lecture in fact 
consists were-written, as the familiarity of their 
tone would of itself indicate, without the 
slightest view to the sort of publicity which 
they have now received. It never occurred to 


183 


me while abroad to take any notes for a lecture 
on North Italy, and I should not have thought 
of giving one, had not some members of the 
Committee pressed it. But having now learnt 
that a trip to the Continent may be made the 
means of giving me the pleasure of meeting you 
here afterwards, I shall always be ready, as often 
as sufficient money and time to spare are 
forthcoming, to exclaim with Dr. Syntax, 

“ I’ll make a tour, and then I’ll write it.” 


THE END. 

































Class 

Book 

































